Within a few years of it being established,
the Tree Keepers decided to lock Richmond Park
between dusk and dawn
for the Trees of Richmond Park were known to hunt
at night.
By day they sunned themselves and smiled,
and seemed contented with their well rooted existence,
but they hunted at night.
So, although hemmed in and tagged by curious men,
after sundown the Trees of Richmond Park hunted freely in packs
within the Park’s walls:
Oak was the largest tribe (slow but relentless),
then Beech (clever in coordinated assaults)
with hangers on,
Hawthorn (quick on flat ground)
Blackthorn (vicious in attack)
Birch (a graceful, brutal warrior)
and Hornbeam (clumsy, but tolerated for their tough temperament).
The Trees of Richmond Park prided themselves on their stealth;
slothful in appearance, apparently careless
of the game around them,
but they hunted at night.
They granted a place for the birds to nest, yes, that’s true,
they lulled them into a false sense of safe space
and even allowed them to nurture their young.
This replenished their stock, their lively larder, but
- they hunted at night.
The slower, tastier, ground nesting birds were the easiest prey -
the grey partridge, the reed bunting, stonechat and meadow pipit
all succumbed
- their brittle bones breaking easily
against a well-placed low swing of a gnarly bough.
The swifter raptors repeatedly evaded the hunt
and gloried in their survival
and so the Trees of Richmond Park grew to tolerate
their lack of veneration.
Not so for the rabbits and squirrels of Bone Copse
who were far too foolish to grasp the danger they danced with
and they assumed too late that their burrow-nests were impervious
to a delving nocturn root, to a dawning yawning crevice
- to population cull.
There was talk of young deer disappearing
within the Queen’s Saw Pit Plantation,
but nothing was ever proven.
Rumour also had it that the trees were responsible
for an occasional missing child down in Gibbet Wood
where a bad-tempered Blackthorn resided.
That was hushed up and the parents were persuaded
by the generous Crown compensation scheme
which had been established and maintained
for these and similar incidents.
However, it remained true (at least in the main)
that the Trees of Richmond Park hunted at night.
It was in the dark that they pinned their prey.
It was in the damp dark that they ****** their fill and nurtured their own,
silently, stealthily filling every branch with their hungry young.
They regularly sent their emissaries to claim yet more of the dark,
with scant regard for the territories claimed or boundaries drawn,
by come-lately, day creatures.
And so they established outposts outside the curfewed walls,
securing first rights on any and all nutrients further abroad.
Yes, the trees of Richmond Park chiefly hunted at night.
And as apex predator, they have gone unchallenged.
They have out-hunted, out-delved, out-witted, out-seeded,
out-lived all contenders
and they still occupy their dead of hunted night.
But, Billy,
they are still known to take
the occasional child
to feed their offspring.
And that is why
it was not a good idea
to uproot that sapling.
- Stay close, and let’s get back to the car.
more like a short story in the end
