13: Chapter 17. The Shining Wire  

13.1 Snares  

Before I researched this episode, I vaguely assumed that the use of snares was now illegal in the UK. It isn't. And I am embarrassed not to have already realised this.  

There is no excuse for using such a cruel and fundamentally lazy method as snaring.  

There is a campaign to ban the use of snares in the UK that I fully support. They can be found at antisnaring.org.uk.  

13.2 Chapter 17. The Shining Wire 

Hazel is dreaming again. As Hazel wakes, he realises Fiver has gone. He wakes Bigwig.  

They first look under the Yew tree, but he is not there. Following this, and passing through a hedge, they find Fiver feeding. Fiver suddenly announces that he is leaving for the hills.  

Bigwig turns on Fiver and unleashes his temper on him, telling him he is going to turn the others against him. Then he dashes back through a gap in the hedge.  

Instantly there is the sound of something dreadful happening. Bigwig is caught in a snare. Hazel desperately asks Bigwig what they should do. He just manages to reply that it is useless to bite the wire. They need to dig the peg out. Hazel tells Fiver to run and get the others.  

Blackberry joins them first, followed by the others. Hazel asks Pipkin if Cowslip is coming. Pipkin responds that Cowslip told Fiver to stop talking about it.  

Blackberry has worked out to dig out the peg. Hazel starts digging, followed by Silver then Buckthorn.  

Blackberry suggests sending the smaller rabbits in to bite through the peg. Pipkin starts, followed by Fiver. Despite cutting their noses on splinters, they split the peg.  

Bigwig lies still. Hazel realises he has to get them away quickly. He utters the famous line about his heart joining the Thousand "for my friend stopped running today".  

Hazel asks Pipkin to say more about what Cowslip said. The rabbits of the Warren had ignored Fiver, then, when he went up to Cowslip, he had struck Fiver, scratching him.  

Suddenly Bigwig's voice rings out. He is alive and very angry. Silver says they should drive the rabbits from the Warren and take it for themselves. Several of the group agree.  

Fiver shout out a shocking Lapine phrase. He lays out what has been happening and they listen in silence. The Warren is snared every day. The local farmer realised he could farm these rabbits for their meat and pelts.  

They became big and healthy. But also strange in their ways. There was one rule: never ask where anyone is, unless in a poem or song. And any actual mention of the snares could provoke violence.  

If they take over this Warren they will just be living in a place of death. Bigwig, still recovering, asks Fiver what they should do. Fiver replies that they should leave.  

Hazel adds that they should go to the hills.  

Suddenly Speedwell spots a rabbit coming towards them from the Warren, running headlong. It is Strawberry. He begs them to take him with them.  

They leave. 

13.3 Part One of Watership Down  

So ends Part One of the book, which has taken us from one warren Fiver warned the group they had to leave to another where the same happened again.  

The Warren of the Snares, to give it its proper name, possibly confirms the supernatural nature of the world in which this book is set even more. The imagery of Hazel's dreams and Fiver's comments on this Warren remind me a little of the influence of Cthulu in H.P. Lovecraft's 'The Call of Cthulu'.  

The challenges our travellers have faced so far have severely tested their cohesion as a group, but they have come through these united. They have lost no one. In fact their group has grown by one.  

They are heading, at last, for the hills to the south. One of which is called, it may not surprise you to learn, Watership Down. 

13 4 Next Episode  

I am going to pause from going through the book for one, maybe two, episodes, so that I can discuss wider subjects around the book and its portrayals. Vocab: Silf: Outside (as in 'silflay')