The Rabbit Catcher

I was up in the woods one day with a group of boys, when one of them spotted a rabbit nearby. He looked at me, I could see by his face that he wanted to stalk it, I said to him go for it and remember what I said about peripheral vision. We had spent some time over the previous weeks playing games that taught them how to do silent movement.

He slowly removed his shoes, then he lowered his profile, stalking forwards on all fours. He was in peripheral and aware of the rabbit’s movements, several times he counter tracked the rabbit.

The rest of the group looked on in silence. I was stalking with him but in a wide arc, supporting him while he attempted to catch the rabbit. He was doing extremely well, moving slower and slower, his body hugging the ground more and more as he got closer to the rabbit.

Then the moment came, he had stalked to within one arms length from the rabbit, suddenly he switched back into tunnel vision and reaching out too quickly, the rabbit realised something was wrong, it spotted him and it was off on its toes.

The young man was disappointed that he had rushed it at the last moment, knowing that if he had taken his time he could have picked the rabbit up. However he knew where he had gone wrong, and in my mind he had clearly learnt an important lesson that day from his experience, the rabbit had taught him well.

Not bad for a twelve year old boy.