IT is not just Parisians who are making a break for the country. All around, animals are heading for the hills. The other day four sheep broke out and were found wandering the road over the moor, not far from where the escaped bull recently caused a traffic jam. On several occasions in the past, when driving around a corner, I’ve almost collided with a runaway. I did once find a ewe that had been killed by a car; it was not a pleasant sight.

More happily, on the edge of Hoolet a pair of renegades can be seen serenely grazing, far from their flock, alone in the corn stubble amid watchful crows. On a walk through the woods with a friend, we came upon two white horses, draped in their turnout blankets, munching grass by the footpath. One of them nuzzled our palms while the other, a grizzled veteran, watched on placidly. How they had got there I couldn’t say, but from a distance they looked like something from the days of Camelot, a knight’s white chargers, in cloth armour.

Even when beasts are under control, the risk of them getting out of hand is ever present. Farming Today – a must-listen hereabouts – had an item about Cumbrian farmers whose limousins spend the summer on the Solway’s Burgh Marshes – where Edward I died before attempting another incursion into Scotland. By the time these cattle are rounded up for winter, they are virtually wild. The sound of them trying to evade the ramp into the truck will have struck a chord with anyone who has ever tried to get an animal, big or small, to do something or go somewhere it doesn’t want to.

Coaxing my cat into a cage for a trip to the vet was an all-morning event, after which I would look as if I’d been dragged through rose bushes. Once I saw a dog suddenly prostrate itself on a busy pavement in Portobello and refuse to budge. It had recognised it was nearing the vet’s door. Its owner pulled on the lead with both hands, as if engaged in a cartoon tug-of-war. Sadly the lights changed, and I didn’t see how this battle of wills ended.

Hereabouts, cattle are almost as unruly as those on the Solway marshes. Our local bus driver was passing the moor the other week when he was flagged down by a farmer about to usher a herd of Belted Galloways across the road. Fat, woolly and built like sumo wrestlers, these creatures are especially leery at the moment, with calves to protect. The farmer asked if the driver would mind helping him out by standing in the middle of the road and shouting at them. Did he have a stick he could use?

The driver produced a sweeping brush from his vehicle, and got into lollipop position. It was no small herd, as he had expected, but 50 or 60 cows (minus the misbehaving bull, still doing time in solitary). The minutes ticked by as they made their reluctant and erratic way across the tarmac, and the bus driver thought anxiously of his timetable. It had been going so well up to this point.

Not everyone, however, is in escapist mood. In the garden, I’ve discovered three interesting new holes, excavated by creatures making winter burrows. About an inch in diameter, they could be the work of voles or mice. Anything else is unthinkable. Some other time I’ll tell you about our close encounter last year with an exploratory rat. The thought of it still makes me shudder.

As cold weather approaches, birds might want to use nesting boxes for roosts, so they’re now in tip-top condition for occupation. Some weeks ago I unscrewed the lid from the box where blue tits had raised their brood in the summer. Inside was a pillowy nest of moss, fluff and down. Lying on it was a tiny blue and yellow chick, which had perished before learning to fly. It was a sad sight, but I take comfort that the garden is filled with its kind, chirping as they flit between feeders, and viewing the world upside down wherever they stop to eat.

Out for a walk last weekend, with the rain lashing, it was noticeable how quiet the countryside had become. The mares and their foals were keeping warm in the stables, and those horses that braved the elements had taken on the stillness of statues. Squirrels alone were undeterred, streaking up trees like quicksilver.

After a run of wet days, the landscape was sodden. Ditches that in summer had been dusty were now brimful, brown suds making a foam like the head on a pint wherever a branch blocked their route. A drookit wren darted under a bridge, smaller than a harvest mouse, as we picked our way through mud churned by horses, mountain bikes, tractors and boots. Even where the ooze was muffled by a thick coat of leaves, it sucked at our heels. But in the depths of the beech wood, where the canopy was still dense enough to protect us from the rain, there were more holes worth investigating. Some between the roots of trees were large enough for foxes and badgers. What I would give for night-vision goggles.

Actually, what I would give not to have a townie’s bone-deep fear of pitch blackness. One nearby neighbour, who is made of sterner stuff, walks her dog through the woods late at night without a qualm. Others, who were brought up in the country, are equally unfazed.

I realised I still have a long way to go before I am properly rural when I thought I’d rather walk alone down Argyle Street at two in the morning than venture onto the moors with a torch. Other than the risk of tripping over a dozing cow, it is far safer – I assume – to wander alone out here than in a city centre. Yet my default settings remain urban.

I have yet to acclimatize to the quality of dark found beyond street lighting. SAS-style head gear would probably only make things worse, as pale eyes would loom out of nowhere, before blinking and being gone. Better to maintain the illusion that you are alone, than to have proof that the place is teeming.