Raising Hare

by Chloe Dalton

Raising Hare is a book about learning to live less like someone in control and more like a guest in a wild animal’s life. During COVID, Dalton discovers an abandoned leveret—the term for a baby hare—and despite all the statistics, manages to keep it alive. As it grows into an adult, she makes absolutely no attempt to domesticate her charge, never pretends it can be neatly folded into human needs. Instead she watches, listens, and learns: how to cope with unpredictability, with mess, with heart-wrenching anxiety and with moments that are unbearably tender. Historical references tell us how little is known about these animals. Right back to the eighteenth century, most texts are only concerned with how best to kill or cook them. (Dalton has already successfully elevated public and parliamentary attention on hare protection.) Her language is plain, sharp, and honest as we discover ways in which the leveret’s presence reshapes her rhythms, loosens old certainties, and rewires how she sees home and belonging. By refusing to control the animal she learns a different kind of care that is patient, respectful, and quietly brave. The book is never sentimental and it does not tidy grief or joy. It simply shows how one small wild thing can shift a life and, in doing so, teaches us all to live beside what will not be owned.