Raw Spirit by Iain Banks Read Free Book Online

big, slow-flapping adult, making its way empty-taloned across the fields to a nearby telephone pole, to perch and scan.
    ‘Ha!’ Toby says bitterly, glaring at the thing. ‘Buzzards. They’re the reason we don’t have any songbirds at Ballivicar.’
    ‘Oh,’ I say, crest rapidly falling. What a townie you’re showing yourself to be, Banks, I think.
    ‘And as for the otters—’
    ‘You have otters?’ I say, delighted again. ‘I
love
—’
    Toby growls. ‘Damn things keep eating the ducks.’
    ‘Ah.’
    Islay is a fertile, fecund place which is surrounded by – almost infested with – wildlife. There are orcas, dolphins and seals off the coasts, feeding on unseen numbers of fish and crustacea. There are three species of deer scattered through the forests and hills, each of them apparently pursuing lives largely dedicated to jumping out in front of cars at night with the absolute minimum of warning, in – one has to assume – some misplaced spirit of sportingness. There are multitudinous birds of prey, including those songbird-snaffling buzzards, clouds and carpets of wintering geese – just passing through to refuel from and leave fertiliser on the fields (again, at least three different species) – pheasants (plump, brightly coloured birds prone to wandering around fields, hedgerows, verges and any intriguingly tarmacked surface with a distracted air, looking vaguely lost, as though they have the sneaking suspicion they should be somewhere else … basically road kill waiting to happen), otters (boo! hiss!
Bad
otters!), hares –
lots
of hares, usually seen bounding away on back legs that somehow look too long for them, as though they’ve borrowed them from a young gazelle – rabbits, plus a whole slew of smaller creatures that are generally only seen in squashed form, decorating the lumpy, undulating, peat-floated road surfaces of Islay with brown-red splodges of fur, meat and bone. These are, especially when fresh – and indeed preferably twitching – of enormous and consuming interest to the noisy flocks of crows which would otherwise be happily employed looking for sheep recently fallen on their backs so they can peck out their eyes or get stuck into their juicily vulnerable nether regions.
    There’s so much wildlife on Islay it even interferes with the whisky-making. Worst culprits are the geese, who’ve been known to devour entire fields of barley destined for the honour of becoming whisky, but this hasn’t stopped fish and mammals from trying to get in on the act as well; the day we went to Bunnahabhain they were taking apart one of the cooling columns in the still room because a trout had got into the system from the sea, wedged in the heat exchanger and stopped the whole operation in its tracks. It was even – and evenly – cooked, due to the proximity of the place it got stuck to the hot bits of the pipe work, though whether anybody actually ate it afterwards is not recorded. They were discussing putting a better baffle plate or something on the inlet pipe when we left and talking about how that otter managed to get itself wedged in the same place last year.
    It may not exactly be the Serengeti, but living on any farm, especially one in a place with as many wild animals around as Islay, seems to constitute a rapid lesson in the brusque realities of animal life and death; if you didn’t accept the red-in-tooth-and-claw stuff before you get involved with country life, you very soon will. I suppose it’s one reason why farming seems to be a largely hereditary occupation, and why many people who think it’ll be nice to work with animals on a more permanent basis end up having a very short career in the business.
    I’ve never met a farmer yet who didn’t have a whole herd of grisly animal horror stories (often as not involving choice phrases like ’prolapsed uterus’ or ‘maggot-infested wounds’). They are only too willing to share these tales with you in gaspingly forensic detail,