I had been sleeping on reading Raising Hare for a while now. Well, since it came out! I just love rabbits and hares a whole heck of a lot, and I didn’t think my heart could take it if something terrible happened. It is one of my biggest book triggers, throw the book down and never look back things, if an animal dies or is there is animal violence. So, I was tiptoeing around reading this one.
Finally, this spring I went for it. I was about to start my annual reread of Watership Down, and I felt like it was finally the right time. And I am so very glad that I did. I loved it. And I have to admit, I was a bit jealous of Chloe Dalton while reading it! I want my own hare to live with me and just come and go freely from my home! My killers (Max and Mouse) wouldn’t allow something like that but a girl can dream.
So, the summary:
“Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and slept in your house for hours on end and gave birth to leverets in your study. For political advisor and speechwriter Chloe Dalton, who spent lockdown deep in the English countryside, far away from her usual busy London life, this became her unexpected reality.
In February 2021, Dalton stumbles upon a newborn hare—a leveret—that had been chased by a dog. Fearing for its life, she brings it home, only to discover how impossible it is to rear a wild hare, most of whom perish in captivity from either shock or starvation. Through trial and error, she learns to feed and care for the leveret with every intention of returning it to the wilderness. Instead, it becomes her constant companion, wandering the fields and woods at night and returning to Dalton’s house by day. Though Dalton feared that the hare would be preyed upon by foxes, stoats, feral cats, raptors, and even people, she never tried to restrict it to the house. Each time the hare leaves, Chloe knows she may never see it again. Yet she also understands that to confine it would be its own kind of death.
Raising Hare chronicles their journey together, while also taking a deep dive into the lives and nature of hares, and the way they have been viewed historically in art, literature, and folklore. We witness first-hand the joy at this extraordinary relationship between human and animal, which serves as a reminder that the best things, and most beautiful experiences, arise when we least expect them.”
My Thoughts:
I have to give Dalton credit. Her career and adult life was not one that left room for pets or children, and she knew that and never had any. Until lockdown, and until the hare. Her lifestyle needed to be flexible, free, able to pack up and fly out to any country at any time. It didn’t have room for anyone or anything that relied on her for their existence. Until lockdown, when the whole world took a break. And Dalton found a tiny baby leveret on her walk and then saw it still there four hours later. And in a move foreign to her, she brought it home. She did her research, consulted friends and vets and books and journals, and learned how to care for it. She knew that she wanted to keep it wild, which would make everything harder.
So in the weirdness that was the pandemic, she was able to shift her schedule to that of her new charge. And slowly, but surely, they forged a relationship that worked.
Her heart was not prepared to fall in love, but of course, she did. And here I give her credit as well, allowing the hare to come and go, to jump the wall and explore and be a hare, knowing that each time she did she risked not ever seeing it again.
This book was a beautiful story, an explanation of a woman learning to slow down and see the world around her. The natural word. To pay attention to the smaller things, to appreciate a sunrise or a certain flower in a garden. To notice habits of small animals. Raising Hare changed her outlook on the world, on how she lived. She kept her job and when she had to go back to work, she did. But she changed things in her home so that the hare could keep its routing, by installing a special rabbit door in her own door. She had cameras set up so that she could see what was happening at home no matter where she was in the world. All because of hare, she planted a hedgerow.
And noticed the callousness of humans. We are all aware of what happens to wildlife who share this planet with us. We destroy habitats, create barriers, pollute, kill. It was interesting to read this book alongside Watership Down, where Richard Adams also discusses this:
” Men will never rest till they’ve spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.”
“That wasn’t why they destroyed the warren. It was just because we were in their way. They killed us to suit themselves.”
Dalton also discusses this. She mentions that Britain has lost 80% of its hare population in a hundred years, a statistic that saddens me enormously, and names agriculture as the superfactor that has led to the decline of this population.
“More risk came when in the late summer the fields of stubble were ploughed; transformed within minutes to brown wastelands, churned up battledfields of Somme-like proportions from the persepective of the a hare. The earth was cut, broken up and turned over by a tractor dragging a plough, and then drilled and sowed with new seed. I pictured the hares fleeing the steel tractors, their hearts pounding in fear, only to return and find their forms – or their leverets – crushed beneath the vast oblivious treads, or later licking their back paws, unknowingly coating their tongues with chemicals, once the new crops were sprayed.”
“The competing imperative of feeding the nation and protecting our environment are still unreconciled.”
And how do we do that? I wish I knew. Maybe our next generation will find the answer for us.
This book just touches on that a bit, but it would be a natural evolution to thinking about it as Dalton, living so closely with a wild thing. This story was more focused on her relationship with the hare, and how the hare changed her. And it was the most beautiful beautiful story.
I encourage anyone who likes nature nonfiction or rabbits or hares (as they are two different lagomorphs) to grab a copy of this book and read it. It is amazing and beautiful and gentle. Quiet. It is the pause we all need to happen in our lives.
As for triggers, if you are sensitive to animal content there is one very small incident but it is brief and I didn’t find it traumatizing, just a little bit sad. It is worth the read.
And with that all, I wish you a good day, and I hope that whatever you do today, you do something that makes you smile!
I can also add this to my total for the Nonfiction Book Challenge hosted by Book’d Out!
Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.. 