An Irishman's Diary

I bet you cannot guess what CDs by country-singer Willie Nelson and a 1970s rock band called The Skunk have in common with "Classical…

I bet you cannot guess what CDs by country-singer Willie Nelson and a 1970s rock band called The Skunk have in common with "Classical Hits" from the Sunday Tribune, a selection of Christmas carols, courtesy of the Sunday Independent, and the "World's Best Cocktail Songs".

Fortunately for those of you who have good musical ears, this collection is not to be found within an ass's roar of a CD player. Instead you will find them suspended from apple trees in our young orchard.

And just in case you think I am losing my mind, they have been put there for a very special purpose: to deter hares, which I was told will be frightened away by the flashing and movement of the CDs in the breeze. However, success has so far been limited.

Hares like young trees. In fact hares worship young trees in the way that children love ice cream, old men love beer, women love shopping and journalists love clichés. They love the bark, they love the soft green shoots and they adore the soft buds at the top.

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The official Latin name for the Irish hare is lepus timidus hibernicus, but there is nothing timidus about one particular lepus who pays a daily visit to our orchard .

The leader of the gang of hares which has targeted my baby orchard is, I swear, the size of a young kangaroo and has the same colouring. Hostilis, as he has become known on account of his activities, has loppy ears which would shame a fully mature cocker spaniel. He has a head as big as a three-month-old bull calf and eyes the size of a good sized saucer. When fully upright, he is the same height as a chip-reared gurrier of around 14 years and is capable of causing even more destruction.

He has the acceleration of a two-litre hand-built German sports car and would make Shergar, may the Lord be kind to him, look like a milk delivery horse.

Hostilis, and a group of about three other gangsters who hang around with him, have managed to intimidate all the local dogs in the area. When he arrives on the scene, grown dogs scrape front doors and whine to get into kitchens to hide under the chairs.

Interestingly, Hostilishas one known weakness. He is fond of television and specifically, Coronation Street. Each evening, he and his friends sweep across the fields and while they devour what is left of the baby orchard, Hostilislies in sweet grass gazing in the front window of the house at the television, just as the teatime dishes are being washed.

Not long ago a cross-border survey of the Irish hare claimed that its numbers were declining both here and in Northern Ireland, where the population was estimated at 8,250. The report said it appeared that loss of habitat, illegal trapping and hare coursing had contributed to the decline of lepidus timidus hibernicus. I see nothing to suggest that is the case.

In my youth, one might walk a full day without seeing a hare. And those you did see were genuinely timidusand would run miles to stay away from a human or a dog. Now we have Hostilisand his ilk.

I suspect the change has come about because greyhounds are now being muzzled and many of the 92 coursing clubs in the Republic are not as active as they used to be in trapping and coursing hares.

Fewer hares lose their lives during coursing now that the greyhound is muzzled and with over 40,000 farmers in the Rural Environment Protection Scheme, there is more habitat for the hare.

My own belief is that hare numbers are actually rising, due to the increase in afforestation and the presence of small, unprotected baby orchards where caring people like myself are attempting to save endangered species of Irish apple trees purchased at great cost from the Seed Savers' Society.

This has led me to conclude that the only solution to this problem is to muzzle hares because clearly nature has gone out of balance and we need another study - into why lepidus timidus hibernicushas suddenly become hostilis. Or perhaps we need to find whoever managed to clear the giant hares out of O'Connell Street.