United States or Ireland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then the commotion seemed suddenly to subside. After an interval the hounds splashed by once more among the alder-roots, and the thud of human footsteps resounded in the "holt." In the silence that followed, Lutra, reassured, dived from her "holt," and, paddling gently to the surface, saw the last stragglers of the Hunt climbing the slope towards the farm.
Had the old man taken one false step he would have entered on a struggle for life compared with which my own adventure after hooking the grilse would have been insignificant. For several months free, happy Lutra made her daytime abode in a "holt" among the alder-roots fringing this pool.
Lutra soon baffled our inexpert hounds, and gained refuge in a "strong place" well behind a fringe of alder-roots, whence Bob, notwithstanding his most strenuous efforts, failed to "bolt" her.
The big dog, Joker, lived at a farm in the village, and, during the leisure of summer, when rabbiting did not engage his attention, took to wandering by the river, joining the bathers in their sport and poking his nose inquisitively under the alder-roots along the bank.
Dawn was breaking when, in her onward journey, she reached the river; so she drifted around the bend, dived over the fall, and returned to her home beneath the alder-roots. A villager, knowing the eagerness with which otters seek for frogs, and that they often cross a narrow neck of land at the bend of a stream, had for a time kept watch at the lower end of the old farm garden.
When the water was low and anglers seldom visited the inn, Bob, during the summer week-days, followed Joker's course of action, and attached himself to a bathing party frequenting a pool below the ruined garden on the outskirts of the village. There, like Joker, he searched beneath the alder-roots, but without success as far as an otter was concerned.
But, less familiar than Lutra with the strength of the current, they left the water as they approached the fall, and crept through the deep shadows of the alder-roots till they reached a point at some distance beyond the pool. These events of the night were of the utmost importance to the otters as connected with the events of the morrow.
Wild life in our quiet valley will be deemed of unusual interest when I say that less than six hours before writing these lines I visited a badger's "set" a deep underground hollow with several main passages and upper galleries, where, as I have good reason to believe, a fox also dwells an otter's "holt" beneath gnarled alder-roots fringing the river-bank, and another fox's "earth," all on the outskirts of a wooded belt not more than a mile from my home, and all showing signs of having long been inhabited.
Word Of The Day