Book Review: A memoir of rescuing a baby hare shows how to live gently with the wildlife around us
Chloe Dalton was taking a winter walk near her farmhouse when she encountered it: a tiny baby hare — known as a leveret — lying huddled and alone in the middle of a narrow country lane.
A London political adviser who was living in the English countryside during the pandemic, Dalton knew next to nothing about hares. Yet when she found that the leveret hadn't moved for hours, she decided to take it home and try to save it — despite her fears that by interfering she might hurt its ability to return to the wild.
What follows, as recounted in the new memoir, 'Raising Hare,' was an unexpected experiment in coexistence.
The book is part of a timely genre: true stories about people who open a window into the natural world through intense observation of one wild animal or species, often in their own backyard.
Think of Amy Tan's recent 'The Backyard Bird Chronicles'; Catherine Raven's 'Fox & I'; Sy Montgomery's 'Of Time and Turtles'; Helen Macdonald's 'H is for Hawk'; David Gessner's new 'The Book of Flaco'; Elisabeth Tova Bailey's 'The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating.'
Unexpected connections with other species can feel comforting and important at a time when wildlife is so besieged. Nature feels very far away — yet here it is in your backyard. And maybe, these stories say, you can do something to help.
It's fascinating to learn along with Dalton as she looks for information about hares. She searches in books but finds little that's helpful. She's led to believe, for instance, that the leveret will remain aloof; instead, it comes to feel comfortable, jumping around with her and curling up against her while it sleeps. Yet it also leaves for long stretches beyond her garden wall, returning on its own inscrutable timetable.
Dalton has to trust her instincts. Insisting that the animal isn't a pet, she doesn't name it, calling it just 'little one.' She gives it free reign of her house and garden, making no demands and taking care never to startle it.
She describes the leveret's evolving behavior and body in painterly detail.
Her research into hares mostly reveals a history of sport and slaughter. Dalton notes their population's precipitous decline in England because of encroachment on their habitat (agriculture and its careless machines are particularly to blame.)
She notes changes in herself, too, as she adapts to a slower, simpler life. She begins to pay more attention to her wider natural surroundings. She notices predators, and watches the other hares beyond her wall.
'Raising Hare' is a plea for people to be gentler with other creatures, to grant them room to live.
'Coexistence,' she writes, 'gives our own existence greater poignancy, and perhaps even grandeur.'
___
More AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews
Julia Rubin, The Associated Press
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
36 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Charles Woodson Faces Tom Brady Again, Now as Browns Owner
The Super Bowl isn't just a game—it's a giant convention, a who's who of football money, where the members of the sport's ownership class rub shoulders and make deals. During the run-up to last year's event in Las Vegas, Cipriani, the upscale Italian eatery at the Wynn Plaza, served as the backdrop for one such meeting, featuring one of the game's most accomplished players and an NFL power couple. Hall of Famer Charles Woodson dined with Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam, along with their daughter-heir Whitney and her husband JW Johnson. For nearly two hours, the Haslams and the Fox broadcaster discussed an array of topics, from football and team operations to Woodson's humble upbringing in Fremont, Ohio. Woodson, named Ohio's Mr. Football in 1994 after a stellar career at Ross High School, told the Haslams that even in his wildest dreams, he could never imagine being an owner of his hometown NFL team—the same storied franchise that drove him to become a pro football player. Advertisement More from Woodson left Las Vegas optimistic about the conversation. However, he still had no real indication that the Haslams would offer to sell him a stake in the Browns and let him become the franchise's first outside minority partner in their family ownership group. 'It could've gone either way from there,' Woodson said in a phone interview. 'It was a great meeting, at least I felt like it, but you never know how someone is feeling on the other side. From there, I didn't know anything.' The interest was, in fact, mutual. Woodson and the Haslams sat down again for another meeting near Woodson's home in Orlando, Fla., during NFL owners' meetings a month later. The family eventually invited him out to Browns headquarters in Berea to tour the team's facilities and training grounds and meet with team executives and staffers. Woodson soon received a formal offer to join the ownership group, a minority deal approved by NFL owners last month. He reportedly paid $5 million for his .01% stake. Advertisement 'I'm from a working-class community, so ownership was never part of my [previous football] conversations,' Woodson, a nine-time NFL Pro Bowler who retired in 2015, said. 'But I feel like I deserve the opportunity for what I was able to give to the game. In some ways, I feel like this is the game repaying me back, and I'm thankful for that.' Woodson isn't the only Fox employee to be an NFL limited partner; Tom Brady, Woodson's friend and former Michigan teammate, officially bought into the Raiders last year. Woodson and Brady are tied together in NFL history through the infamous 'Tuck Rule' game in 2001, but the two remain close more than 20 years later. He says the former New England Patriots quarterback reached out to him to send a note of congratulations last month. The two will fight for bragging rights when the Raiders host the Browns on Nov. 23. 'Here's two guys who came into the University of Michigan together in 1995, and here we are [30] years later and now we're both NFL owners,' said Woodson, who won a national championship and Heisman Trophy with the Wolverines. 'How about that? We're co-workers and opponents again.' Woodson, 48, is the latest former pro athlete to join an NFL ownership group. His purchase highlights the league's push to diversify ownership. The last few years have featured a swath of diverse leaders joining the league as limited partners, from former Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes (Atlanta Falcons) to a trio of former Toronto sports stars in Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady and Jozy Altidore (Buffalo Bills). Advertisement Both of those deals were orchestrated by Shepherd Park Sports CEO Derrick Heggans. The former NFL attorney with close ties to league owners also played an integral role in Woodson connecting with the Haslam family. The former All-Pro defensive back's entree into the Browns ownership started with a phone call a couple years ago from former Arizona Cardinals star Larry Fitzgerald, who plays golf alongside Woodson every year at the American Century Championship celebrity tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nev. Fitzgerald, a savvy investor who once owned a stake in the NBA's Phoenix Suns, asked Woodson if he'd ever considered team ownership. If so, he said he should meet with Heggans. Soon after, Heggans and Woodson were discussing possible cap table openings, including with the Las Vegas Raiders, the franchise for which he played 11 of his 18 NFL seasons. Heggans ultimately convinced Jimmy and Dee Haslam to consider Woodson, given his football championship pedigree and deep roots in the Buckeye state. 'He's a favorite son of Ohio,' Heggans remembers telling Jimmy Haslam. 'Once you're that, you're always that. … Ohio is proud of Charles Woodson and would love to welcome him back home. He becomes your secret weapon.' As a part team owner, Woodson, like Brady, will be subjected to the league's broadcast restrictions—he will be barred from production meetings with owners and players, and he will not be able to enter other teams' facilities. He says it's not a problem due to his studio analyst pregame role on FOX NFL Kickoff. Advertisement '[Brady's] job is much different than mine,' Woodson said. '[Brady] has to have much more of a touchpoint with each team that's playing each week where he's the analyst. He's more intimate with that process, so he's got a lot of restrictions on him and what knowledge he's privy to.' Woodson says his job 'is a different animal.' Being a limited partner in an NFL team may also impact Woodson's other ventures. He owns a liquor company (Woodson Whiskey) and wine company (Intercept Wines), and reports have stated he will have drop the 'Woodson' name from his whiskey venture, since the NFL's alcohol policy states no team owner can use their name, image and likeness for promotional purposes. Woodson says he hopes his new ownership position will be beneficial for his brands from an awareness standpoint even if that means potentially changing the way he promotes his businesses. The Super Bowl champion has ambitions of marrying his former and current ventures, hoping to make his wine company a leaguewide NFL partner, like California-based Barefoot Wine. Advertisement Woodson, nonetheless, is pumped to be part of the Browns' organization. He looks to contribute in a variety of ways, including with on-field matters, he says, if head coach Kevin Stefanski and the front office are interested in his perspective. When he's not handling his Fox analyst duties or elevating his businesses, he's spending time as a defensive coach for his son's high school football team (Lake Nona) in Orlando, Fla. But now he can also add owner to his lengthy football resume. It's a dream come true for the kid from Fremont. 'It's incredible news,' he said. 'Incredible.' Best of Sign up for Sportico's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Chicago Tribune
2 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Column: For more than 40 years, sketch artist Andy Austin captured our courtrooms' crimes and characters
Andy Austin was an artist drawn to the activities, antics, boredom, rare joy and frequent heartbreaks of the dramas that play out in the courtrooms of our city, vividly capturing their characters and crimes for more than 40 years. 'I never planned to be an artist,' she told me long ago. 'It just happened.' Austin died in April in Maine. She was 89 years old and had been planning an exhibition in a local gallery. The career of Ann Rutherfurd Collier, a relative of the McCormick family that founded the International Harvester Company, may not have been what was expected of a Vassar College English major, born in Chicago and raised in Boston, and the wife of a music teacher and composer at a private school here, and mother of two children living on Astor Street in the Gold Coast. In the late 1960s, her children in school all day, she explored ways to exercise her interest in art, which she had studied in Florence, Italy, after college. She wandered the city, finding suitable subjects in such things as the older men playing chess on the beach at North Avenue. And then in 1969, a notable trial came calling. 'I thought that might be interesting to draw,' she said, referring to the trial, which involved what was called the Chicago Eight (soon Chicago Seven), who faced a variety of changes, such as conspiracy and inciting a riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, in what would be one of the defining legal cases of the time. She went to court, and though her art supplies at first were confiscated because she wasn't a member of the press, she snuck them in and started sketching. Eventually allowed in the press section, she showed her work to WLS-Ch. 7 reporter Hugh Hill, who was so impressed that he hired her on the spot. And soon she drew a bound and gagged Bobby Seale, one of the defendants in the trial. It was a powerful image that would appear not only on local TV but in newspapers across the country. Her career was launched, and she would be there for the next four decades, there when Governors George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich were there; serial killer John Wayne Gacy, mobster Joey the Clown, the members of the drug-trafficking El-Rukns gang, mob hitman Harry Aleman and hundreds of more ordinary others. Her sketches and watercolors were powerful and arresting, often embellished by her notes about who she was drawing and other significant observations. She was part of what was a predominantly and powerful female group of artists, which also included pioneers such as Marcia Danits, Carol Renaud, and soon-to-retire Cheryl Cook, who brought the faces of the courts to millions watching TV and reading newspapers. Her daughter, Sasha Austin, told me, 'My mother lived in two opposing worlds: a fancy bohemian one, and another of gritty crime, and she loved them both.' I knew Andy, first meeting her more than 50 years ago when she was the ebullient wife of my high school's music teacher, John Austin, and got to know her better during her courtroom career. She was charming in an almost girlish way, but quietly glamorous too. WBBM-Ch. 2's Bill Kurtis first met her when he was covering the Chicago Seven trial and referred to her evermore as 'the Lana Turner of courtroom art,' recalling that movie star discovered at a drug store. As the years went on and the drawings piled up, Austin told me more than once, 'Sketches are wonderful material for stories. But the sketches can't tell the whole story of these fascinating trials and people.' That's one of the reasons she wrote a terrific 2008 book, 'Rule 53: Capturing Hippies, Spies, Politicians, and Murderers in an American Courtroom.' I interviewed her about it at a 2008 Printers Row event and read some of her fine writing to the crowd. Here she described State Senator John D'Arco: 'I was struck by how small and neat he was, like a well-designed pocketknife.' Or this on a witness: '(He) came limping in on a cane. Hunched over in rumpled, pale silk clothes, hair parted in the middle like a 1920s movie star, he could have been a burnt-out playboy, someone you might see hobbling along the boardwalk at a second-rate European spa. He had an out-of-season look about him.' We did not talk about the book's pages about her pain of losing her teenage son in a fatal car crash on Lake Shore Drive, or her divorce or her daughter. And we never spoke again. I wrote her a note after hearing about the death of her second husband, the esteemed University of Chicago professor Ted Cohen in 2014 and someone told me she had moved to Maine, a place where she had spent some of her childhood summers with her parents and grandparents. I knew that she had donated more than 3,000 of her watercolor sketches to the Pritzker Legal Research Center. And when I heard about her death I also heard that she had written a novel, 'The Bar Harbor Formation.' I ordered a copy. The day after I heard of her death I read a great Chicago magazine story by the prolific Bob Chiarito. It was about courtroom artists and in it he wrote, 'There are still court sketch artists in Chicago — although their days may be numbered as more and more courts allow cameras in. Currently, there are two main sketch artists who freelance for the television news stations and newspapers in town … down from the days when every station and newspaper in town had their own courtroom sketch artist on staff.' Those were Andy Austin's days and she lived them fully.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
AP PHOTOS: BTS stars Jimin and Jung Kook discharged from military service
YEONCHEON, South Korea (AP) — Hundreds of fans gathered Wednesday to catch a glimpse of K-pop superstars Jimin and Jung Kook, the latest and final members of BTS to be discharged from South Korea's mandatory military service. Supporters traveled from around the world to the public sports ground where the meet-and-greet took place. Color-wrapped buses bearing BTS members' faces lined the streets while red and yellow balloons floated above and a decorated food truck provided free coffee and water, adding to the festive atmosphere. A day earlier, RM and V each saluted upon their release in Chuncheon City as about 200 fans, some of whom traveled from Mexico, Turkey and Brazil, cheered. Jin, the oldest member of the K-pop supergroup, was discharged from the army in June 2024. J-Hope was discharged in October. The seventh member, Suga, is fulfilling his duty as a social service agent, an alternative to military service. The seven BTS members plan to reunite as a group sometime in 2025. Anaesi, a fan from Portugal, displayed a colorful tattoo featuring a golden shield emblazoned with 'ARMY,' along with BTS members' names in Korean. She said the group 'saved' her from depression. 'So for me BTS is my angel,' she said. ___ This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.
