Country Life
TURNING off the main highway we ran along a rough road that passed through unfenced scrubby ground. I could see a pair of rabbits ahead, sitting on the short springy turf. One sat motionless, the other pricked its cars up and slowly bobbed away. They were myxomatosis victims. I got out of the car and went over and killed the rabbit that remained where it had been when I had first caught sight of it. It was a poor bloated creature, sitting waiting for death, its sight- , less eyes bulging from a swollen head and its body raised in fearful, ugly lumps. How many awful days it might have gone on suffer- ing I could not guess. The other rabbit could still see. It disappeared down a burrow and it made me sad to see it go, for it had the same end before it and might sit unseen among the bracken, waiting without hope of a more merciful end. Every one is too busy at harvest to do much about suffering rabbits. Here and there they have to stop machines to clear the victims of the plague from knife bars. Cartridges are being issued to encourage the humanitarian work of destroying infected rabbits. Anything would be better than allowing these poor helpless creatures to die so slowly and so painfully. One cannot ignore the shameful fact that in a civilised country such suffering on the part of animals, vermin or not, does not trouble the conscience of the public a great deal.
Previous page
