The Sheep Lose Their Wool And Two Rabbits Lose Their Lives

Nature is fickle. She offers up three unexpected lambs – and Sarah is almost embarrassingly besotted with special needs Frank – then slaughters George and Mildred, the oldest surviving rabbits. In between, all adult sheep got sheared, which included the resentful Shetlands who had been busy trying to shed naturally. This made them look as though five small boys in jumpers had leaped through a thorn hedge. Peter, the whopper of a Romney (and a little bit thick too) had been carrying about six kilograms of fleece. So now I’ve got a barn full of sheep’s wool which will sit there while Sarah doesn’t turn it into felt or spin it, like she didn’t last year, until I put it all on the compost.

This morning tragedy struck the rabbits. Something – a werewolf? A bear? A great ape? – leapt into the rabbit run (over a five foot fence), onto the cage, and stamped its way through until it could rip Mildred’s head off. Then it killed George, although since there wasn’t a mark on him, it’s possible he died of shock. And I don’t blame him. The carnage was horrible – why rip the head off a rabbit, take it away and leave a whole meal lying next to the unharmed body of its mate?

Sarah is distraught, and I don’t blame her. I don’t really have much affection for the rabbits, but I also don’t like violent death. And there seems to be a slight flaw in nature’s extraordinary way of sorting out supply and demand, in that demand is usually vicious, and supply wrenched screaming from the source. Does it really have to be like that?