Yesterday while prowling through the fields near where we live I saw two dogs far from their owners chase and bring down a small deer.

What I learned from this episode is that the gruesome wildlife programmes which we sometimes see on TV are dumbed down for our entertainment.

It is one thing filming and broadcasting an antelope being chased by a leopard, or a croc hauling an errant wildebeest under water – as an abstract spectacle it is rather elegaic and splendid.

What they edit out are the sounds. The sustained unwordly whining and panting and squealing and keening of the stricken animal as it gets torn to pieces.

Then suddenly … silence, broken by busy snuffling.

If they gave us those sounds too, the unsettled public clamour against our wallowing in such ‘cruelty’ could be immense.

Disconcerting how the human senses of hearing and smelling are so powerful in this primal way once we go outside our ‘normal’ range of experience…