We’re all fox-hunters. It’s just some of us are more honest than others. These days we sneer at past generations and their blood sports: Roman gladiatorial contests; early-modern bear-baiting; Victorian bare-knuckle boxing. And we have a point. Those sports prized the blood-spatter. Ignore your conscience briefly, though, and imagine what the spectators might have felt. An almost giddy thrill, plus deep relief: thank god it was not your blood in the sand. But even to indulge this thought experiment feels wrong. That past is foreign. I class fox, deer, and bird hunting in that same group. I think they're outdated, outmoded, and will soon be out of fashion. I also don’t think I’m alone in this – look at the huge reaction to the Tory manifesto commitment to repeal the fox hunting ban. Hunting is part of a bloodsport world sustained by an aspect of human nature that is disappearing. That's why I scoffed when I read Gilbert White, an otherwise astute observer, say the fol
I’ve been at war with rodents. On the street where I lived in Brixton I’d see them sometimes, big, well fed, three or four convulsing a bin bag. Once, some rats even moved in underneath the tarpaulin on our roof terrace, after the fox, our first tenant, had cleared out. Climbing up the rusty fire escape towards our front door, I’d hear them squeak and see them scurrying away. Sometimes I chased them beneath the stairs, cornered them, and then wondered what, exactly, I’d planned to do. Probably I would have yelped and run away if Mister Ratto ever charged me. Eventually, though, we twigged to the rodent colony, binned the tarp, and rid ourselves of the rats. Fast forward a year and to a new house, new challenger. These were smaller, less intimidating, more insidious, than their ratty cousins. They chosen method of warfare was psychological. I’d wake in the middle of the night to ‘eek eek eek’, the scratching of mousine claws on some err, protein powder (I can explain…) that I