It came from further away from my feet. Truly I only saw the erectile tail here and there as, without any real haste at all, the deadly little predator closed in on its quarry. Now I saw why the small rabbit was already dead when it passed me by. There is no more deadly natural predator in the wild than the stoat. Mesmerised, unable to intervene, I saw the tail above that feral streak of ferocity close in on the rabbit on a flat stone, like a ritual altar, and the kill happened there even as the larks seemed to stop singing above my head.
Stoats kill by going for the throat with their razor sharp teeth.
There was nothing I could do. The edges of Nature showed their realities to me, mid all the beauty of the morning. The stoat, taking his time, began to have his breakfast and the larks, as if nothing had happened, began to sing again. In the midst of Life we are in Death. On the car radio as if on cue, came words of continuing anger from the North.