MAY DAYS
The early days of May are, for me, some of the most precious of the year, not simply because trout rise eagerly to a fly, but because the hedge comes into leaf, the swallows are back in their old haunts, twittering on the ridge of the barn or the stable, and the countryside is patterned with carpets of pasture and brown rolled earth where oats will rise. Across these bare fields the seagull drifts, the woodpigeon feeds and the plover calls. On the grass the lambs seem whitewashed, as white as only such creatures can be in the bright light of the early year. One thing is missing on the bank along the woodside—the rabbit. It, is time for the magpie's brood, for pigeons in thorn trees and larches. The badger has cleaned house and the fox travels over the plough from one primrose hollow to the next, but the rabbit in his ones and twos, or his hundreds, is no more. 'I saw a rabbit last week,' someone says, but /of course this is accepted with reserve. Some people never go out without seeing a fox, or so they would have us believe, and it is natural that they should claim to see rabbits now that none is to be seen for mikes.
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