The Methodical Stoat
You can generally (I maintain) tell when a rabbit is being hunted by a stoat, because it moves in a stiff, tucked up, pre- occupied way. The young rabbit that came running down the track towards me had this gait, and sure enough a stoat shot out of the grass behind it. I stopped the car, but not before both hunter and hunted had seen it. The stoat jinked back into the grass, the rabbit merely sat down near the side of the road about ten feet in front of me. The stoat reappeared, as they usually do if you keep still, having gone back to pick up the scent. He followed it down the track, with his nose so close to the ground that he looked more than ever like a snake, to within about six feet of the rabbit, lost the scent, bustled back and started all over again. The rabbit, meanwhile, was sitting up on his haunches, blinking occasionally. Twice more the stoat made an unsuccessful ,cast, the last time turning off into the grass only four feet from the rabbit and by-passing him at even closer quarters; then he went back -down the track to his original starting point and dis- appeared. All this time the rabbit, sitting bolt upright in the open, had been as conspicuous as a church spire, and it was extraordinary to me that the stoat's intelligence, which enabled him to hunt a line with such method and precision, didn't teach him to use his eyes at the same time as his nose, especially when his nose was at a loss. As I drove on (causing the rabbit to come out of his 'trance and disappear) the stoat's behaviour reminded me of those bureaucrats and staff officers who never depart from the correct procedure, invariably use the proper channels, do everything according to the book and, never taking their noses out of their files, often fail to observe that the solution of the problem is staring them in the face all the time.
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