Using crabs to catch rabbits
Liz: You must tell the story about trying to get rabbits in the valley.
Peter: With Brian Orchard ya, I’ve told all these things before but anyway it doesn’t matter. We decided to go rabbiting because we were quite keen with homemade bows and arrows. Alright from the length of this room they wouldn’t knock a paper hat off but the distance of eight feet it could be quite lethal because they had sharp points and we would pull them back to the full length after that the flights weren’t very good so they would be all over the place anyway we decided to go rabbiting but we knew we had to get the rabbits close up so we thought we would never do that because once rabbits get wind of something they are gone.
We decided we catch a little tin of green crabs, lively ones, cock ones full of life and we had a candle we cut into pieces, then we lit the candle and melted the wax onto the back of a crab and then stuck the candle on the back of the crab and put it down the rabbit hole and there the crab would be going down the hole with a candle on its back and we would nip the other side because it was a bank just before you come to the Mill (there was a bank there) with rabbit holes both sides, so on of us would stay one side and the other one would stay the other side and the rabbit would come out chased by a crab (laughter).
Anyway we went on and on and we got rid of all our crabs, except one, and gave up. Anyway we were coming back still looking down the holes and we got back to the first hole and this little crab with the light on its back was coming along with the candle still burning on his back so we decided he deserved to go back to freedom so we carried him back to the harbour (lots and lots of laughter).