SANITY rules once again in Beggarsdale. Teacher Tess has been forced to bow to country ways, Owd Tom has turned a nice profit, and the village has a formidable new character. Meet Fearsome Felicity.

My reader (thanks again, Mrs C) may recall that, a couple of weeks ago, Attila the Coney and his rabbit hordes set up camp in Teacher Tess's newly made-over cottage garden, destroying her expensive decking and making fast and loose with her almost as expensive herbs.

As LoCoPoCoThoPo (Local Commandant, Politically Correct Thought Police), Tess is naturally against bloods sports. So she turned for the council for help, to be told that, if she fenced off her garden with wire, they would lend her a humane trap to catch any bunnies left inside.

And what do I do with them then? she asked. That's up to you, hinted the council. You can release them somewhere else - or kill them yourself.

When she recovered from the vapours brought on by the latter suggestion she thought about the former and, God bless her, realised that this would be merely exporting the problem to someone else's back yard.

So, heavy in heart, she went to Owd Tom, whose old ferret, Fearsome Fred, died of stress recently, worn down by battling alone against the awesome odds of this year's lupine plague.

Would he shoot them for her? Cost a lot in cartridges, said Tom. Better to buy a new ferret.

So five crisp tenners changed hands and Tom (unbeknown to Tess, of course) acquired a new beast from a contact in Mar'ton in return for fifty rabbit carcasses, which he will sell to the butcher and send the skin to a furrier who makes kiddies' mittens.

So Fearsome Felicity arrived on the scene, a female smaller, thinner but hungrier than even the late Fred. Tess and Tim went away for a few days and the slaughter began.

Now I should explain to the squeamish that the ferret did not kill the rabbits. She merely drove them into nets placed over exit holes from the warren and Tom, helped by Mid Tom and Yun'Tom, despatched them with - yes - a rabbit chop to the back of the neck.

They had filled their 50-animal quota by lunchtime and went to spend their ill-gotten gains at the Beggars' Arms. Later, they added a score more - and picked up contracts to clear the gardens at Old Vicarage and Coney Wood Cottage too.

Then there's the fencing. Tim couldn't be bothered to do it himself and neither could Maggots Money-Grubber at the Old Vicarage. So the younger Toms started on that after suitable negotiations with a local supplier and pocketed a couple of hundred in profits.

Within days, orders were coming in from over the tops in Crookedale which, since the foot and mouth slaughter, is threatened with being buried under a rabbit avalanche as there are no sheep left to compete with their grazing.

"Better than farmin', this," said Owd Tom over his fourth pint of Ram's Blood last Sunday as Tess and Tim walked in to thank him for saving their precious garden.

At that point, the Innkeeper's Lady emerged from her kitchen to announce: "Rabbit pie, anyone." Tess stood her ground and had her vegetarian lasagne as normal.

* The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.