Letter to a grouse

COUNTRY LIFE STRIX

DEAR GEORGE,

You must, I am reasonably sure, be the first membes of your species to have assaulted a member of mine. I know from our brief. en- counter that you are highly articulate, but I cannot be certain that you also have a sense of history, that you are (so to speak) the A. J. P.

Taylor of the moors. I therefore conceive it my duty to record the details of an in- cident in which, although I was the injured party, I admit to acting the part of a provocateur.

You were already notorious before the in- cident occurred. On the evening of my arrival at F— my host drove me on a reconnaissance up the gated road which climbs over the hills behind the house. 'We're bound, incidentally, to meet George,' he said. 'A very interesting character.'

'George?' I said. No habitations were to be found on our route, and I knew my host too

well to suppose that he had granted outspanning rights to the caravan of some keen fellow en- gaged upon a study of bog-myrtle or searching for traces of vitrified forts.

COlin explained that George was the name —nom de guerre would really be a better word —by which you had come to be known. He

forecast with accuracy the point on the road at which you would intercept us, the symptoms of fearless aggression which you would display against the car, and the place at which, having driven us out of your territory, you would break off the action.

And there, sure enough, you were, , whirring up out of the heather at the sound of our approach to stand on a rock, crowing. gobbling and-glaring imperiously about yan for. all •the

world as if Sir Edwin Landseer had booked_ you for a sitting and then turned up late.

In the mind of the ever-victorious (and you, after all, chalk up several victories a day against the transient invaders of your realm, which extends for about seventy yards along the narrow road) the images of the vanquished become blurred; and I fear that by now you may have forgotten what you did to me. Colin stopped the car. I, a shambling biped, emerged. You held your ground, twelve feet or so away, and continued as though by some reflex action to issue a stream of indignant protests which had no effect upon the situation and which for some reason put me in mind of Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. To these I replied in a feeble mimicry of your own diction.

I then sat down on the roadside bank. Noting this sudden diminution in your adversary's stature, you advanced a yard or two; the volume and the vehemence of your ultima- tums increased. I stretched out my hand towards you and wiggled my fingers about. You can never have seen a human hand before, or anything like one, and I expected that this phenomenon, if it did not disconcert you, would arouse your curiosity, that you would at least interrupt your tirade while you in- spected it.

Nothing of the sort occurred. Still protest- ing at the top of your voice, you took two paces smartly forward and pecked me in the middle of the palm as hard as you could.

There are some things which, though well worth doing once, are not worth doing twice: like, for instance, climbing Everest, producing Pericles, Prince of Tyre, or growing a beard.

It is to this category of human experiences that, in my view, being pecked by a grouse belongs; and though I felt, and still feel, in- tensely proud of the singularity which your

assault confers upon me, I saw no point in letting you have another bash. There is no need to become a grand blesse when one has already, by appearing in the casualty lists at all, acquired enough merit to last a lifetime. Besides, I thought that as you got your eye in you might hurt me rather more.

So I withdrew to the car, leaving you un- disputed master of the field; and as we drove slowly away you skirmished vociferously after us, now flying alongside, now charging along the road behind, until we reached the frontier of your little kingdom; there, as though checked by an invisible ray, you suddenly broke off the engagement and, after making a farewell demonstration of defiance, flew back whence you came.

I wish you the very best of luck in your future career. I shall be surprised if it does not include an appearance on television; I have never seen a wild bird whom it would be easier to photograph in close-up. But I hope you won't allow all the attention you receive to go to your head, that the success of your aggressive tactics won't atrophy your instinct of self-preservation. From man, because you are fearless, you now have almost nothing to fear; but however many cars you chase down the road, however many minor essayists you peck, don't for goodness' sake forget your older enemies. All that barnstorming has paid off with the human beings; but there won't hi many of us about in the winter, and your habit of drawing attention to yourself is one of which,

I must remind you, the eagle, the hen-harrier and the fox will all be quick to take advantage. I should start playing it a bit cooler, if I were you.

Your well-wisher,

STRIX.