Beagles

King leads the pack under the barbed wire and into the pondside covert where the rabbit has gone to ground. Irma’s persistent ferocity at the earth sends the rabbit bolting back out. Eight-year old Mandy arrives in time to see Lincoln with the rabbit’s hind-end clenched in his jaws. She giggles. We turn our worries to the other spectators: the family who has just emerged from their ratty mobile home planted in front of the corn field. I wave my friendliest wave. They don’t even uncross their arms. We skulk away, letting the beagles chew their meal out of sight.