The dog has settled into her role and rabbits are bolting

Our drive to the farm between thick hedgerows ornamented with berries flickers with dark and light as the sun catches and then the shadows take precedence. The back of the vehicle, never the most fragrant of places unless you are a dog, is tart with fresh musk, because the ferrets are excited.

They have not been out working since the late spring, but they are mature ferrets each with several seasons of work behind them, so I had not expected this level of reaction.

Putting their locator collars on them is very much working with a moving target, and getting them back in their boxes afterwards about as easy as getting the Genie back into the lamp.

With my hands now smelling strongly of ferret, I start to walk across to the buries we had planned to work today.

They lie in a mixed plantation of evergreens and deciduous, so there is little ground cover to block the rabbit holes, but plenty in the way of fallen cones and brash to tangle in the nets.

The dog, also excited but not even remotely as smelly as the ferrets, is pacing about the warren already, delicately scenting the rabbits beneath and then fixing us with a piercing gaze to tell us we should get on with it.

Setting the nets takes us a good half an hour, and then we cross to the next group of trees to net up the buries under there. En route, I see, right out in the open, a mound of earth that has something of the rabbit about it.

Mound of earth or rabbit? I have just decided it is a mound of earth when it flicks an ear up, and the dog is away. She has a full hundred yards run-up and then is on it, the rabbit putting in a brace of spectacular handbrake turns before the dog connects. We have one rabbit, then. But the dog only retrieves it halfway back, and no amount of encouragement will persuade her to go back and pick it up again. She is normally a good retriever, so my first thought is that she may have taken some injury, and I walk up to her with that enquiry, but she glances back at the rabbit, then at me, to tell me it isn’t worth it and I wouldn’t want it.

Sure enough, the rabbit has myxomatosis. This bodes ill for our ferreting foray, but we are here now and will make the best of it.

The first bury is slow to show any action, apart from the ferrets, which are behaving as if they have never been to ground in their lives.

In fact, one will not go to ground at all, and keeps running about on the top of the bury, tangling the nets and dodging our hands.

What can have got into her?

Suddenly she dives into a rabbit-hole and must have connected with a rabbit right away, for out it shoots into the net, and we are on our way.

Busy for the next half-hour, we see no improvement in the over-excited ferret, and in the end we put her back in her carrying-box to calm down. By the time we start the second bury she is still wound up like a watch-spring, and we abandon any attempts to get any sense out of her.

Maybe she will be better next time. Maybe the others will as well, for they too are far too excited and are not working as they normally do.

The dog, however, has settled serenely into her usual role, and rabbits are bolting.

We finish early, as the dog is not fit enough for a full day, and nor are the ferrets, though you would never think it by the way they are behaving.

Despite all, we have a reasonable number of rabbits, and we have not found another diseased one, so that is good.

The trip back is just as pretty as the outward journey, and the ferrets, returned to their court to tell the others about their day out, are just as flighty as they were on the buries.

We are out again soon, so let us hope they will have settled by then.

Foxglove