Kenny’s hare-raising escape from danger
AS promised last week I bring you tales of my hand-reared mountain hare, Kenny Leveret and his nemesis, the also hand reared golden eagle, Griselda, who both resided at Bleak House, Crowden, for a time in 1981.
The eagle responded as she should to the sight of a prey animal tripping too near her perch, launching herself talons first, with her six feet wings spread wide, almost like arms to scoop up the clumsy hare.
Of course, she had a line attached to her leather jesses and Kenny seemed to have an uncanny understanding of just how far she could reach and appeared completely underwhelmed by this ‘mad as a wasp’ golden eagle strutting around on the ground, having missed him yet again.
You see, Kenny was there first and his morning routine was to run around the hillside at the back to the house before coming to my hand for a carrot and a bunch of heather at the back door.
Griselda was only visiting, but she did cause a bit of a stir during her stay, especially amongst the farming community who were a little incredulous when they watched me out on a walk with her over Hey Edge.
I can reveal now, 40 years later, that I did let her off for a flight or two, purely for exercise you understand, and although she was good at flying back to my gauntlet at the sight of a day-old-chick, she had not mastered the art of hunting.
Kenny, on the other hand, had certainly mastered the art of annoying his apexpredator.
She nearly got him once on his morning spin around the hillside garden; she was ready to pounce, but in a magical and obviously inbred escape tactic, Kenny, rather like a Harrier Jump Jet, shot up vertically, landed and set off in the other direction.
Griselda, meanwhile, stomped about like, well, an angry bird, shaking snow from her plumage before hopping back onto her wooden block. Not happy. I was lucky enough to witness this behaviour in the Highlands a few years later; this time it was wild golden eagle that dived in from nowhere across the snowy amphitheatre of silence in the Glen of Moy.
I had just watched a turkey-sized capercaillie drop three feet from a branch before flying off, a small flock of redpolls flashing past like drops of blood on a sheet and heard the gentle boo, booing of a passing short eared owl as it swivelled its head in my direction. The eagle, at lightning speed, hit the snow and, like Kenny, the wild hare launched itself upwards, maybe six feet in the air, only to land on its snowshoe-like furry feet and make off over the drifts out of sight.
Another angry bird, but what an amazing five minutes in paradise that was and obviously I reached for my hipflask, which had been filled the night before with a vintage Aberlour by a very rich Italian Prince at Culloden House Hotel, but that’s another story for another week.
Suffice to say that, at the time of the Jacobite uprising in 1745-46, Bonnie Prince Charlie used Culloden House as his lodging and battle headquarters prior to that fateful battle on Culloden Moor.
If you ever find yourself around Inverness then a night in this wonderful old house, with parts of the original Jacobean building still visible, will raise your spirits in many ways and the rooms start from £130 per night.
And talking of spirits, the 4th Laird of Culloden’s nickname ‘Bumper John’ came from his fondness for French wines.
Around 1730, the author of the book Letters from A Gentleman in the North of Scotland writes about Bumper John: “There lives in a house by Culloden, a gentleman whose hospitality is almost without bounds.
“It is the custom of that house, at the first visit or introduction, to take up your freedom cracking his nut (as he terms it), that is a coconut shell, which holds a pint filled with champagne, or such other sort of wine as you shall choose. You may guess that few go away sober at any time and for the greatest part of his guests, in that conclusion, they cannot go at all. A hogshead of fine claret was kept in the hall, so that guests or even passer-by could refresh themselves with a pint of claret.”
Sounds like my kind of guy.