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NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
as if to see them off her grazing ground. When the hay is
growing she generally lies on the long grass, and while it is being
cut will often lie without moving till the machine has. cut all
round her to within 20 yards.
She has had one or two scares. Once last autumn year, when
she disturbed a wasps' nest on the edge of a pond. On this
occasion, after bounding about the field and rolling in the grass,
she made for the Forest. Another time, she stayed for six weeks
on an island in the pond, which is one of her private resorts.
When a boat which had not been used for a year was launched,
she jumped about 20 feet into the pond and swan the full length
of the water.
The owners' dogs, having all been kicked by her, now take no
notice of her, except when she chases them—which she will do
to within four yards of their master. She has been known to
stalk a dog lying in the growing hay, and jump on him with all
four feet together from a distance of four or five yards.
About the beginning of October she is restless and generally
goes off to the Forest, seeking in vain some of her own kind,
but returns to her own fields at night, and by the end of October
settles down again. She has no fear of the sound of a gun, but
if she sees any fallow deer gallop over the field she is in, she is
off to the shelter of the wood as hard as she can go.
Last Whitsuntide (1914), when a body of boy scouts were
camping at the farm, she could not resist coming to see what
was going on, and actually on the Sunday walked up to the fence
round the garden to listen to the band as the scouts marched
to their church parade, and attentively listened to the sermon
within 60 yards.
Although she will jump any wire fence in the field, she has
not so far ventured into the garden of the house, but she has
not yet experienced a hard winter, and although she can get
unlimited hay from the stack, there is no doubt that in hard
weather she will take her toll of any winter greens; but to them
she is welcome, as personally the owner prefers her company
to that of the cabbages.—Gerald Buxton, J.P., Verderer, Birch
Hall, Theydon Bois, November 1914.