Eyes of the Hare

Brown hares have large golden-coloured eyes set on the side of their heads, providing them with almost 360 degree vision. Directly ahead of them is where they can see least. They have been known to kill themselves by running into an object or even each other because they have obviously been looking backwards at whatever was behind them rather than forward. This all-round vision means that from their hiding place they can view everything about them. It is a fallacy that hares never close their eyes. They shut them when they are fighting to avoid injury and also when they are dozing. In common with many other animals that are the prey rather than the hunter, they do not go into a deep sleep. They probably merely relax and nap.

- Jill Mason
The Hare
pp. 49-50

Tan Lines XXIV

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

In the Light of the Moon

The hare is nocturnal and spends most of its day in a shallow form on the ground; and unless someone approaches very closely it will not move away from its resting place. Apart from the certain times of year, in the spring mating season or during the corn-harvest when hares are disturbed, there are few to be seen about the countryside. But you will frequently see them out at dusk or in the light of the moon, moving and feeding in the fields. If they have lain in the open or in the woods or reeds of a marsh for the best part of the day, they will come out into the open at night to feed and disport themselves.

- George Ewart Evans and David Thomson
The Leaping Hare
p. 112

Morning Light XXXIII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Creatures of Habit

Hares are creatures of habit and use the same tracks and gaps in hedges, which has always made them easy for poachers with nets or snares. They also make good use of the unsown lines left in arable crops which are now such a part of modern farming practices. When they are chased they know exactly where they are heading.

- Jill Mason
The Hare

Image: "Hare in the Barley" by Bells of Suffolk.

Checkum

Former UK Big Brother House Mate Dale Howard is appearing naked in a campaign for the UK Charity Macmillan Cancer Support aimed at encouraging men to check for testicular cancer.

Tribe

Tribe, from "Survival" by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.
Color lithograph with chine colle; 35/50.

Tan Lines XXIII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Catholic Tastes

The Brown hare has catholic tastes, feeding on a variety of crops. It is wholly vegetarian and is a fastidious feeder, much preferring the lush tender young shoots of corn and clover, different grasses, crops of swedes, turnips, cabbages, lettuces and carrots to rank herbage. The hare is not averse to dining on the bark and shoots of all kinds of trees and shrubs. It also enjoys the delights offered to it by smallholders and market gardeners who grow an even wider range of vegetables! In the flower garden hares can wreak havoc, having a penchant for dahlias, carnations, pinks, nasturtiums, wallflowers, primulas, heathers and herbs such as parsley and thyme.

- Jill Mason
The Hare

Image: The Leveret.

Leporid Sculpture

In creating her 14' Leporid in St. Paul's Western Sculpture Park, artist Mary Johnson used rebar, lath and cement. She also invited children from the neighborhood to help create mosaic medallions from found objects which were then embedded into the leporid's "hide." She used the hub caps from a '58 Ford for the eyes!


Images: The Leveret.

Morning Light XXXII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Soul of the Sufferer

Write George Ewart Evans and David Thomson:

. . . Belief in the transmigration of souls either into animals or other human beings seems at one time to have been universal. The thought behind it is familiar to us all and comes from observation. A parent can often see his/her dead father or mother not only in the character but in the gestures and facial expressions of his/her child and it is natural for anyone who lives among animals to observe in them traits that belong to people too. They were and sometimes still are, invested with human souls by imaginative sympathy; the lion has the dignity and courage of a noble person, the elephant wisdom and the long memory that goes with it, Swallows are skilled and spiritual. The hare is chosen for qualities as varied as its nature and has the soul of the sufferer, the fecund begetter, creator of arts, inventive dreamer, and, principally, of the person who is gifted with an intuitive leaping mind.

In some societies it was not everybody’s soul that could enter an animal. Only the chosen – the wise elder or the child that was born to be a priest or shaman – possessed that power; they possessed it during their lives as well as after death. Like the witches they could shift their minds into paraphysical states, rendering themselves “beside themselves” as we say of people who have temporarily abandoned the controls of reason.

The [following] ritual rhyme of the Scottish witches . . . describes a psychological transformation that went together with dressing up as a hare. In modern English it means:

I shall go into a hare
With sorrow and sigh
and (probably) mental torment.

– George Ewart Evans and David Thomson
The Leaping Hare
Pp. 148-149