Raising Hare: A Memoir, by Chloe Dalton - A Review
On a winter walk, Chloe Dalton found a newborn hare on a country lane in northern England. Then, she found herself as caregiver to this wild creature.
At first, she left the hare on its own, assuming its mother would return. But hours later, the newborn hare remained alone.
A winter leveret.
Dalton would have taken the hare to a sanctuary, but during the pandemic lockdown, she took the hare home, a converted barn in the English countryside.
Dalton is a foreign policy specialist, not a zoologist, yet she knew that hares are not meant to be pets. She didn’t give it a name.
When the hare was ready to return to the outside world, Dalton let it go. But the hare kept coming back.
Because Dalton worked from home, she was able to watch and write about the hare as it grew.
During the day, the young hare rested near Dalton’s chair in the home office. At night, the hare would jump the garden wall to explore the fields beyond.
At times, Dalton feared she was doing more harm than good. Her sister, an intensive care nurse, once received a panicked call from Dalton.
Dalton is a foreign policy specialist, not a zoologist, yet she knew that hares are not meant to be pets. She didn’t give it a name.
When the hare was ready to return to the outside world, Dalton let it go. But the hare kept coming back.
Because Dalton worked from home, she was able to watch and write about the hare as it grew.
During the day, the young hare rested near Dalton’s chair in the home office. At night, the hare would jump the garden wall to explore the fields beyond.
At times, Dalton feared she was doing more harm than good. Her sister, an intensive care nurse, once received a panicked call from Dalton.
“I’m not the right person to do this. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m going to kill it by accident.”
Dalton may not be a naturalist, but she has a naturalist’s eye for detail.
“Each ear, narrow at the root, broadened out into a wide oval before tapering into a slanted tip, sheathed in fur so black that it seemed to have been dipped in ink.”
Throughout the book, Denise Nestor’s gentle illustrations chart the progress of Dalton’s coexistence with the hare, as the reader, along with Dalton, learns about hares.
In the last 100 years, Britain has lost over 80% of its hare population which is why many of Dalton’s friends had never seen a hare or heard of the word “leveret” to describe a young hare.
On this surprising journey of discovery, Dalton realized that without the lockdown restrictions:
“I would not have looked at my life from a different perspective, and considered both what more I might be and the things I might not need.”
Continuing to adapt her home and her life to the hare’s presence, Dalton installed a hare door, so the hare could enter and exit the house at will.
Even if that meant, she may never see the hare again.
“Although I will always wonder, years from now, whether any new quiver in the grass hides a crouching, black-eyed, watchful leveret.”
And now, I’ll wonder, too.
Chloe Dalton divides her time between London and her home in the English countryside. Raising Hare is her first book. Named as Book of the Year by The Hay Festival of Literature & Arts. On the British Sunday Times and New York Times bestsellers lists.