Holidays in Heck by P. J. O’Rourke Page A

Act. But rabbits can still be hunted. “Because they’re considered pests,” Michael said. “Because of lot of Labour voters hunt rabbits,” Adrian said. Also, for some reason, “the hunting of a hare which has been shot,” is permitted.
    The pack arced away from us across a broad field. Just as it did, the hare that the beagles weren’t supposed to be hunting came at the three of us with a speed hardly credible in a land animal. If it had been less nimble (and bigger) it would have bowled us over. The dogs seemed to have lost the scent.
    â€œThe hare went that way!” Michael shouted to the master of the beagle hounds.
    â€œThe
shot
hare!” Adrian shouted.
    â€œYou mean the ‘bush rabbit’!” the master shouted back. Interesting to wonder how many of the MPs voting for the Hunting Act would know a rabbit from a hare if it turned up in their Easter basket. Maybe on a menu.
    We spent an hour with the beagles. They no more got a bush rabbit than Michael and Adrian had got a stag, but the clambering and clamor of the beagles were a joy. I’m a strong advocate for animal rights. I am an animal. I belong to Animal NATO—us, dogs, horses (cats are France). And I belong to Animal WTO. We export feed to sheep, cows, pigs, and chickens, and, to maintain the balance of trade, we eat them.
    The Thompsons gave a dinner that night. Their house was of
Middlemarch
era but with fewer old bores writing the
Key to All Mythologies,
and more stag heads on the walls. The main course was pork roast from a farm pig, rather than venison from the Exmoor stag (which in any case would have needed to hang for a week). Miscellaneous small terriers sat on guests’ laps.
    The consensus of the party was that the hunting ban had to do less with loving animals than with bullying people. This was not a class struggle, I was told. The working class was all for hunting, said one guest. And she was a Labour peer. Nor was it, she said (she herself proved the point) a Labour-Tory conflict. Instead, all agreed, a certain kind of today’s urban elite was getting its own back at what they saw as a traditional elite that had no use, as Michael Thompson put it, for people “with shaved heads and five earrings and their husbands just as bad.” But, all agreed again, hunts aren’t as posh as they used to be—and they never were.
    There’s truth to this, judging from the foxhunting prose laureate R. S. Surtees, who had his h-dropping London shopkeeper Jorrocks hunting with passion in the 1830s. Anthony Trollope wrote, “Surely no man has labored at it as I have done, or hunted under such drawbacks as to distances, money, and natural disadvantages. I am very heavy, very blind. . . . Nor have I ever been in truth a good horseman. . . . But it has been for more than thirty years a duty to me to ride to hounds.”
    The word “duty” must seem strange to people not involved in field sports, to today’s urban elites who don’t see the look on the dog’s face when the laptop instead of the gun cabinet is opened during bird season. Of course it’s tempting to think that the word “duty” always seems strange to modern urban elites.
    Still, in a way, the bullies are understandable. There’s a certain satisfaction in taking something away from people perceived as having been too certain and self-confident for too long, people who’ve dominated society but whose dominance is slipping away. Network news anchors come to mind.
    Then again, the bullies aren’t understandable. Adrian used to be the master of foxhounds for a hunt in northern England. At the annual hunt ball antis protested outside. “With balaclavas pulled down like the IRA,” said Adrian. “One told me, ‘We’ll smash up your car tonight, Adrian.’ They knew me by name. They didn’t smash my car. They broke every window in my house. I found my dog and