Leveret

choi

(1) Karin Altenberg, A Long-Eared Guest. Locked down in the English countryside during the pandemic, a writer finds an abandoned juvenile hare. An unusual relationship begins. Wall Street Journal, Mar 1, 2025, at page C*
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture ... houseguest-99f68f4f
(book review on Chloe Dalton, Raising Hare; A memoir. Pantheon, Sept 26, 2024)


(2) Animal memoirs | Hare Today, Still Hare Tomorrow. The Economist, Apr 3, 2025
(review on the same book)

Quote:

"The story begins during the pandemic as Ms Dalton finds herself adjusting to lockdown at her weekend country home. One day she hears a dog barking, investigates and finds a palm-size leveret (baby hare) lying on the grass strip between two tyre tracks. She leaves on a walk,but when she returns,the leveret is still there. Buzzards circle above; left alone, it would probably be run over by a car or eaten. So Ms Dalton takes the animal home * * *

"A poem about a hare written by William Cowper in the late 18th century advises. 'His diet was of wheaten bread,/ And milk, and oats and straw;' indeed Ms Dalton's companion turns out to love oats.

Note:
(a)
(i) The book title Raising Hare is a wordplay on the idiom raising hell.
(ii) The Economist title is a wordplay on the idiom here today, gone tomorrow.
(b)  
(i) English dictionary:
* leveret (n): "a hare in its first year"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/leveret
* etymology of English noun leveret: from Old French of the same spelling, diminutive of [Old French noun masculine] lievre hare, from Latin noun masculine lepus hare.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lievre
   ^ Compare Latin-English dictionary:
      * lupus (noun masculine): "wolf"  (The English noun wolf descends from Old English noun masculine wulf.)
      https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lupus
(ii)
(A) A hare is also called a jackrabbit. etymology of jackrabbit: "also jackrabbit, large prairie hare, 1863, American English, shortening of jackass-rabbit (1851; see jackass [male donkey (Jack is a masculine given name)] + rabbit (n.)); so called for its long ears [like donkey's]"
https://www.etymonline.com/word/jack-rabbit
(B)
• What's the Difference Between a Rabbit and a Hare?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/rabbit-vs-hare
("Hare derives ultimately from the Old English word [adjective hār] for 'gray.' * * * They [Hares] also tend to live alone or in pairs in above-ground nests, whereas rabbits often live together in groups of up to 20 in underground tunnels known as warrens")
• Hare and rabbit are in different genera (which is plural of the noun genus).
• "They have 48 chromosomes,[11] while rabbits have 44." en.wikipedia.org for hare
• Rabbit vs Hare: what's the difference?  BBC Wildlife (published by The Wildlife Trust), May 9, 2023
https://www.discoverwildlife.com ... ts-the-differencesg
("Whilst exploring the British countryside, it's likely you may have spotted a rabbit or brown hare * * * Both rabbits and hares were both introduced to the UK from Europe (rabbits by the Normans and hares by the Romans) but are now fully naturalised species. * * * Unlike the rabbit, the hare is a shy solitary animal")
• Hares are born fully furred and with their eyes open, while rabbits are born blind and hairless. Hares are also precocial, meaning they can move and feed themselves shortly after birth. Rabbits, on the other hand, are altricial and rely on their mother for care in the first few weeks.
(C) Do Not Disturb Young Hares. Vienna: FOUR PAWS International, Apr 2, 2024
https://www.four-paws.org/our-st ... disturb-young-hares
(c) William Cowper
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cowper


----------------------WSJ
There is something both wonderfully archaic and utterly contemporary about Chloe Dalton’s memoir of finding and raising a baby hare, or leveret, during the Covid-19 pandemic. A British political adviser and foreign-policy expert, Ms. Dalton was used to operating in high-pressure situations but out of the limelight.

When the world locks down, Ms. Dalton writes in “Raising Hare,” she returns to the rural English landscape of her childhood summers but feels pinned down and struggles with the change of pace. Then, on a cold day in February, she comes across an abandoned leveret. After some consternation she decides to bring the animal home—a choice that will have greater consequences than she can imagine. “A baby hare,” she writes, “had no place in any of the scenarios . . . I had envisaged for myself.”

Although tiny and adorable, this is clearly a wild creature. Hares have never been domesticated, a conservationist tells Ms. Dalton, and it’s unlikely the leveret will survive. As the two begin their fragile coexistence, the structure of Ms. Dalton’s life becomes tied to the sleeping and feeding of the leveret. There may be a parallel to the way Ms. Dalton has tuned into politicians and world events—she worked for William Hague when he was the British foreign secretary—but her hyper focus has now been replaced with a gentler attention. The sharp analytical mind of the adviser has given way to the keen observation of a 19th-century scientist.

One of the great glories of the book, beautifully illustrated by Denise Nestor, is the way in which Ms. Dalton records the appearance, movement and behavior of the growing leveret. There are moments when the writing is slightly overblown, almost Victorian, as if Ms. Dalton were trying out a nature-writing voice rather than relying on her own powerful prose: “No hawk ever pounced more eagerly than I did at each new discovery, holding aloft a blade of leaf or stalk thick with seed.”

Ms. Dalton doesn’t anthropomorphize and she doesn’t give the leveret a name—it is simply “the leveret” and, later on, “Hare.” This unusual memoir reminds us that we are all animals. “The leveret’s preoccupations influenced me in other, more subtle ways. As its gaze traveled further, so did mine, drawing my mind, and increasingly my feet, outdoors.”

We get to know the leveret as a being that likes warmth, narrow spaces and coriander but dislikes bumblebees, wet stone and pools of standing water. It develops a “fascination with seams” and will nibble, “like a crimping iron,” down the side of a trouser leg, the edge of a pillowcase or the end of a shoelace. It leaps onto Ms. Dalton’s bed, bouncing around and drumming its paws on the duvet cover. “It could I suppose have been signaling something to me,” Ms. Dalton writes, “but if so, its paws spoke a language I could not follow.”

As the leveret grows, the author allows it to run through the house and garden. She leaves a door open so it can come and go freely. Ms. Dalton, enclosed herself due to the lockdown, notes that confining the leveret would be wrong. Luckily, it turns out to be a “sensitive house guest”—it leaves no mess on the carpet, eats a vegetarian diet and smells pleasant (“faintly like digestive biscuits”). It’s also, according to Ms. Dalton, suspicious of men.

As I read about the leveret—its serenity and vulnerability, its perpetual attention and sudden bursts of energy—I was lulled into a sense of mystery. I was also struck by the animal’s innocence, which makes the first line of the seventh chapter seem rather devastating: “The day the leveret left, it gave no sign of its intentions.” It simply leaps over the garden wall and disappears into the fields. Although she has reared the creature for the wild, Ms. Dalton is bereft at the loss.

The leaving, however, turns out to be temporary. Hares have a powerful homing instinct—they love familiar spots and will always strive to return to the “home range.” Early that same evening the leveret reappears and from then on it settles into a new routine, sleeping all day by the door of Ms. Dalton’s study and then, at dusk, after eating some porridge, leaping over the wall and returning to the fields.

“The leveret worked upon my character soundlessly and wordlessly,” Ms. Dalton writes. “I realized that my own home range had changed because of the leveret.” One day in April, in a show of trust and gentle order, the leveret, who is now Hare, returns to give birth to two leverets in Ms. Dalton’s office. (Once again, there is no mess.) Soon the smallest of the leverets is “frisking through the grass, leaping and twisting as if powered by the wind, like a kite swooping close to the ground.”

But there is constant threat too. The mortality of leverets is 50% in their first 28 days. Britain has lost 80% of its hares in the last century due to hunting and farming. As an observer of global conflict, the author is all too aware of human destruction: “As in so many areas of human endeavor, if we are not attentive, there is blood in the harvest.”

Ms. Dalton has given us a portrait, both ephemeral and real, of a “creature of habit, set hours and favorite places, that walks so lightly on this earth, and that can be trusting on its own terms.” She seems to share Hare’s traits of serenity, stillness and alertness to danger. It’s a testament to her skills of observation that the two reflect and enhance each other in unexpected, often remarkable ways: “I would not have looked at my life from a different perspective, and considered both what more I might be and the things I might not need.” In these times of division, it’s a solace to me to know that Ms. Dalton continues to advise on foreign affairs.

Ms. Altenberg is the author of the novels “Island of Wings” and “Breaking Light.”