The Law and the Peewit
The eggs of plovers in some parts are now receiving protection all the year round, the Board of Agriculture having given notice that peewits feed wholly to the benefit of field crops and do no injury whatever to the interests of farmers. The greedy and the thoughtless have taken plovers' eggs in unreasonable numbers, and total protection is to be welcomed. It may be argued that peewits' eggs are a rare delicacy, and wholesome food; that where they may be taken a limited number of old men may earn a few shillings; that a law superior to find-and-take would be difficult to enforce; also that taking the eggs until about the middle of April does not materially affect the numbers of peewits. What with the effects of frosts and the destruction of eggs during the tillage of fields, such as harrowing the fallows and rolling the grass and cornfields, where peewits mostly nest, the greater portion of the first layings cannot in any case survive. But those allowed to take eggs for the sake of profit will not stop at early ones, and peewits are such useful birds that thorough protection for all the eggs would be the best policy.
The Partridge and the Peewit
The partridge and the peewit seem to lead almost blameless lives. We could claim that the productive value of land is improved by the presence of partridges and peewits. There is no end to the good work of partridges. Even when they devour grain, they are innocent of doing harm, for they eat only such grain as is shed on the stubbles—waste grain which none could grudge them. They never seek out grain newly sown, like the rooks. When a field has been harrowed, directly the men and horses have gone, the partridges gather in numbers to feed, and though they may come after the field has been sown, they come as readily before, as it is not the grain, but the slugs, grubs, worms, and insects they are seeking; bits of weeds and their seeds, aphides, earwigs, and ants' eggs are eagerly devoured.
A Friend to Agriculture
The partridge is disheartened when a broad acreage is laid down to grass; insect food grows scarce, and he soon takes his departure. On arable land thrown out of cultivation the birds will thrive, because of the hosts of weeds that spring up, and give them food and shelter; insect food is found on the surface, and partridges multiply. But nothing suits them better than highly cultivated arable land. The more the soil is worked, as by harrows, the more food they are able to find—and the more good they do by destroying insects and grubs that injure delicate roots. Where land is needed for partridges there is every need also of the peasant; and partridges bring the peasant many a shilling for nests, and, when work is scarce, many a day's employment at good wages (such as wages are), with a hearty lunch into the bargain.
The Rats in the Stacks
No doubt one reason why farmers fail to co-operate properly with gamekeepers in keeping rats down is because they do not see the damage which rats inflict upon them. A farmer is deeply troubled if he sees a blade of corn or grass nibbled by a rabbit; he will make frantic efforts to secure that rabbit—which has a market value. But a rat does little visible damage, and when dead is worth nothing. Another cause of apathy is that the farmer knows how useless it is to deal with the rats on his own premises when the supply is promptly renewed from his neighbours'. In a single corn-stack he entertains cheerfully, perhaps, 500 rats. Assuming that each rat eats three pints of corn a week, the 500 rats in three months eat fifty pounds' worth of corn, to say nothing of the grain and straw they damage. In a day, ten rats will consume enough food to keep a man. If anything further were needed to impress a rat-cherishing farmer, we might point to the statement that a female rat may be responsible, theoretically, for between twenty and thirty thousand descendants in the course of twelve months. But it is left to the gamekeeper to be the rat-catcher of the countryside. The farmer goes cheerfully to bed, unaware that rats are enjoying themselves in his stacks to the tune of two or three pounds a day. Many keepers destroy two or three thousand rats in a year.
Thoughts on Rat-hunting
As a hunter of rats the gamekeeper has no equal, though he could do little without the help of his trusty ferrets and ratting terriers. He and his assistants are on terms of thorough understanding. We know an old keeper whose ferrets seem to have a strong affection for him; they are quiet to handle, and are treated as pets, but they are the best ratting ferrets in the world. The keeper does not care to use good rabbiting ferrets for ratting: they may be lost and bitten to death—a rat bite is always dangerous. Ratting ferrets need peculiar qualities, and are not necessarily the most ferocious of their kind.
The keeper's ferrets seldom nip him, for he knows how to handle them. A ferret nips, and is not to be blamed for it, when a hand suddenly makes a grab at him without warning. The keeper's way to attract a ferret's attention is by speaking before touching. "Come on, Betty," or "Come on, Jack," he says in soothing tones, as he boldly puts forward his hand. His passwords of friendship are useful for coaxing a ferret from a hole or from impenetrable bushes. The ferrets tell him if a rat is near by the action of their tails as they enter a burrow, working them after the manner of a cat about to spring on a mouse.
When Cats are Angered
Why should cats and ferrets at times lash their tails when approaching prey? The tail-lashing suggests suppressed excitement, also a way of gaining impetus or steadiness for a spring. But we think it should be read chiefly as a sign of hostility and ferocity. A ferret enters a burrow, discovers that there is a rat a little distance from him, is angered, grows excited at the prospect of a fight, and lashes his tail. But we have never observed a ferret to lash his tail when approaching a rabbit—comparatively a harmless prey. A cat gives the same storm-signal when annoyed, as when her fur is rubbed the wrong way, or when she is about to spring on a mouse or a rat, each capable of retaliation. But she seems to lash her tail chiefly when her prey has come suddenly to her notice without warning; when she has been lying for a long time in wait for a mouse, her tail hardly twitches, in spite of her excitement; she is cool and collected, and her spring brings certain death.
Hunters' Thirst
When rat-hunting, and working hard, ferrets and dogs grow excessively thirsty. One old keeper friend always takes the trouble to carry with him a small flask of water for his ferrets, offering it to them at intervals in the palm of his hand. For his dogs also he carries water and a tin dish—while he seldom goes out ratting without a gallon jar containing what he describes as "a little summat" for himself.
Life-in-Death
Now and again it happens that a ferret is killed accidentally while at work. And sometimes dead ferrets return to life, health, and strength in a way to put even cats to shame. We recall how a rat-hating keeper's wife, notorious for the quality of her right arm, was one day helping her husband to hunt rats in a wood-shed. On the ferret suddenly popping out his head from a wood-pile, the good woman lost her wits, and aimed a shrewd blow with her poker at the ferret's nose. In tears, she left the poor little beast still and stark. A gardener was asked to bury it, and plant a carnation over the grave. He found it in the dustbin, eating the head of a duck.
In another case, a rat-hunter knocked a ferret with a hurdle-stake from the eaves of a corn-stack far out into a field, where it was picked up apparently dead, and put into a bag. Some hours later the body was tipped from the bag into a little grave, when it startled the gravedigger by gasping for breath. In a little while the corpse celebrated its resurrection by slaughtering all the pheasants in a pen, and just as they were beginning to lay. Once we saw a ferret struck by a pellet from a gun, which went through its head, a hair's-breadth below the eyes. Both eyes were blinded; yet the ferret recovered, and lived and worked as long and well as most of its kind. Ferrets are tougher than they look. The weak spot, no doubt, is in the lungs.
Ideal Ratters
The present type of show fox-terrier is too big and too long in the leg for ratting in hedges. Little dogs are called for, full of sense and pluck, with wide heads, strong jaws, bully chests and short bodies on short legs, which carry them as quick as lightning almost anywhere among the thorn hedges. The keeper does not care for his ratting terriers to hunt anything but rats—and the difference in the work of a rat specialist and a general-purpose dog must be seen to be believed. He does not enter his puppies to old rats, for the puppies may be badly bitten, and perhaps their ardour and dash will be ruined, and they will never look at a rat again.
The general-purpose terrier develops grave faults. If a rabbit or a hare is started, he prefers giving chase to going on with the rat business: he attacks ferrets as well as rats, and he prevents rats from bolting by jumping about over the burrows and poking his nose into them too freely. A terrier must be taught to restrain himself until a rat has bolted. The keeper holds him down, cuffs and rates him soundly each time he tries to go too soon, but gives lavish praise if he waits until the right moment. After a time, the little terriers so well understand the necessity for allowing rats to bolt that they will crouch as motionless as statues, with their noses almost touching the edge of the hole. So crafty was one we have owned, that she would crouch in this way, with her body round the corner, out of sight.
All plans for the destruction of rats are welcomed by the keeper, because rats are the most numerous of all egg-thieves. He heartily joins the foxes, stoats, and weasels in their war on rats, though he is for ever at war with his co-operators. He believes that there are now more rats than ever, and has figures at his finger-tips to prove the growth of the rat-plague. If, he argues, there were only one rat to every acre in England and Wales, and if each rat did damage only to the extent of one farthing a day, the loss in a year would be £15,000,000. And he quotes a report which says that a single poultry-fancier in Dorsetshire lost £80 in a year through rats; that the owner of a flour-mill lost £150 in a year, through the gnawing of sacks alone; that men have attributed their bankruptcy chiefly to rats; and that the damage done by rats in this country is greater than the damage done by the cobra and tiger in India.
The gamekeeper holds that there ought to be complete, organised co-operation against rats over wide areas, and heavily blames the farmers for not giving proper assistance to keepers in their rat-war. By delaying over-long the threshing of their corn-stacks farmers certainly give rats a grand chance to increase and multiply; and when ricks are left unthreshed until April the rats leave them without let or hindrance, to spread over the countryside as the weather grows warmer, and food is to be found everywhere. The keeper argues that ricks should be threshed betimes, to allow the rats to be properly dealt with. A day or two beforehand he would have the rats which lie in out-lying burrows, in neighbouring hedges, driven into the rick; this can be effected by tainting the burrows with paraffin—a simple plan is to blow in smoke from paraffin-steeped rags with a bee-smoker. Then the keeper would have the rick surrounded by half-inch wire-netting. At the time of the threshing he would like to be summoned to the scene, and he would see to it that there were six or seven smart ratting-dogs present, and that they were constantly supplied with drinking-water. In one case where this plan was tried, six hundred rats were accounted for from one rick. Even after threshing and rat-killing on these lines, rats will be found, if sought, in hidden holes where the rick stood—packed to suffocation to the number perhaps of seventy or eighty.
Ratting without Ferrets
The keeper does not always take his ferrets with him when he goes ratting. Usually they are too large to enter rat-holes freely, and even the small rat-ferret has difficulty in turning round. And when a ferret has once entered a hole a rat cannot pass him, and so may be prevented from bolting and showing sport. The sport takes place underground, unless the ferret retreats while there is time. The fight ends either in severe punishment for the ferret or in the death of the rat; when the ferret proceeds to gorge himself on his victim—and to lie up.
Again, it is more difficult to find a lingering ferret in a rat's hole than in a rabbit's burrow; a line-ferret sent in to explore cannot move about in the small rat passages as in the roomy tunnels of rabbits, and so cannot locate the free ferret. To dig for a ferret in a rat's run is always risky; the diameter is so small that the spade may cut through without any warning, and also cut through the ferret. When the spade breaks through the crown of a rabbit's hole, on the floor of which is the ferret, the man with the spade naturally eases his pressure. But the ferret fills the rat-hole to the roof.
There is still another danger in ratting with ferrets; the dogs, unless very well trained, may bring about a tragedy. Even when a dog is ferret-proof the ferret may plunge teeth into the dog, who naturally retaliates. On all these accounts the keeper may prefer to go ratting with an iron bar in place of a ferret.
By using an iron bar instead of ferrets for bolting rats, all kinds of difficulties and delays are prevented; and the keeper is free to go home at any time without having to wait for loitering allies. To strike an iron bar into a rat's hole is to strike terror into the rat's heart. One might probe a rabbit's burrow with a bar for a month, and no rabbit would bolt—indeed, the more one probed the tighter would the rabbit sit. In rabbiting, a bar is used only to find holes and save digging. But thrust a bar anywhere near a rat's subterranean lair, and probably the rat will bolt, as if possessed, at the first time of asking. Such an effect does probing have on rats that they will fly before the crowbar well knowing that enemies await their appearance. Even with a dog at the hole who has grabbed at the rat more than once, the rat will fly before a shrewd thrust. The art of thrusting is to drive the bar into the hole behind the rat, not blocking the way by which it will bolt.
Rats seem to have a deep-rooted terror of anything that probes and prods. Perhaps some of them when their holes are disturbed associate the trouble with pitchforks. For hundreds of years rats have lived in corn-ricks, and at threshing time when the sheaves have been lifted by pitchforks have bolted furiously. The first thrust of the pitchfork into a protecting sheaf puts out the rats, though well aware of the presence of men and dogs. When the iron bar comes crashing into the burrow, perhaps the rats half expect the soil to be uplifted as if it were a sheaf of corn.