Dad, can I ask you something?
(pauses for a moment) I've just had a bit of an idea.
You know that bottle of sleeping pills Doc Spencer gave you when you came back from hospital?
Is there any reason why those wouldn't work on a pheasant?
Remember the raisins, Dad?
Now listen.
We take a raisin.
We soak it till it swells.
Then we make a tiny slit in one side of it with a razor-blade.
Then we hollow it out a little.
Then we open up one of your red capsules and pour all the powder into the raisin.
Then we get a needle and thread and very carefully we sew up the slit...
Now, we have a brilliantly clean-looking raisin chock full of sleeping-pill powder and that ought to be enough to put any pheasant to sleep.
Don't you think so?
With this method we could prepare one hundred raisins, and all we'd have to do is scatter them round the feeding grounds at sunset, and then walk away.
An hour later, after it was dark and the keepers had all gone home, we would go back into the wood...
and the pheasants would be up in the trees by then, roosting...
and the pills would be beginning to work...
and the pheasants would be starting to feel groggy...
they'd be wobbling an trying to keep their balance...
and soon every pheasant that had eaten one single raisin would topple over unconscious and fall to the ground.
Why, they'd be dropping out of the trees like apples!
And all we'd have to do is walk around picking them up!