Make a frame of four by four pine timbers, braced across the corners. It should be somewhat bigger than the biggest rug you expect to beat. Stretch galvanized iron fencing over this frame and staple it securely all round. The best place for this frame is at the side of the barn. Strong strap hinges should be used to attach it to a piece of four by four spiked to the barn at a height convenient for your beating. When the frame is not in use it is pushed up and rests against the side of the barn, held in place by hooks. A rope and two pulleys enable one to raise and lower the frame easily. When down, the frame rests on swinging legs made of inch iron pipe and attached to the frame at the outer corners. The rug should be laid on the netting pile downward.
Rug-beating is hard work no matter what kind of tools one has. But who does not love to ply the hose? I made up my mind once that a rug that had to have an expensive compressed air bath or stay dirty was not living up to its function as a sanitary floor covering. I experimented with an all-wool rug, some good white soap, warm rain water, and a scrubbing brush. A good lather was laid first on the back, then I threw discretion to the winds and lathered the face of the thing. I scrubbed it as if my life depended upon making the colours run, if they would. Then I let the children turn the hose on it. We turned it over and over and over again, till it was very, very wet. It was also clean. We left it on the grass in the shade the first day. Then we laid it still damp, face down, on the clean, dry floor of the porch where the sun could get at it and the breeze. It was dry by the night of the second day and so clean that it was a real joy to handle it. One by one we put every rug in the house through the same course of treatment. A couple of Wiltons, a few of Brussels carpeting, some that were woven out of old ingrain carpets, the rag ones, and finally the precious Orientals went through the water cure. Before I dared do this last act, I got advice from a rug man, who said that really good rugs would suffer no harm from such treatment. But one never believes until he tries it, and now we all believe, and our rugs are more beautiful than before. We treated the best rugs very gently, of course, but none the less thoroughly, and we dried them face up on the hard floor right in the sun part of the time. It takes about three days and nights to get the dampness all out.
Good rugs ought never to be treated roughly. They should be swept gently with the nap, and never beaten with a whip, hung on the line, or shaken. Lay on a soft carpet of grass or on a rug-beating frame and beat gently with a flat rattan beater. When rolled, roll with the nap; never fold them.
I once asked Professor Bailey, "What is the most important farm crop raised in the United States?"
Without a moment's hesitation he answered, "Boys and girls."
Of course they are.
The best farmers, the real bone and sinew of the country, are the kind that raise the crops themselves, without much help from the outside. They grow nearly every thing they eat, and exchange their surplus for the food and clothing that they can't raise. There is a type of farm life where the family is brought up on the principle that what is too poor to sell is good enough to eat. The boys and girls of such a family are too good for such a life. They do not stay in the country. Like the big apples, the prize potatoes, and the gilt-edge butter, though raised on the farm, they are consumed in the city.
The country is the best place in the world for boys and girls to grow up in, just because it is the country. But there are ways in which country life can be improved and if the grown folks are too busy raising crops, the young folks must head the campaign which is to make the country a better place to live in.
Since this is a book on outdoor work we cannot consider ways of making the life indoors more attractive, more comfortable, more convenient, and more sanitary, but concern ourselves with outdoor problems only.
Boys and girls, stop and think. What can you do to make your own particular corner of the country a better place for you and your companions to live in? When a crowd of boys meet together, what do they talk about? Are they interested in local affairs or do they tell each other of the great things they expect to do when they get away? A wise old man once said, "In a republic you ought to begin to train a child for good citizenship on the day of its birth."
Are you going to be a good citizen? Are you patriotic? Do you salute the flag at school, and then go out and break the game laws? Train now for citizenship. There is more patriotism in obeying the laws of your home, your school, your town, and your state than there is in parading with flags and band in the National Guards. Good citizenship begins at home. How can you make your own home a more desirable place for your brothers and sisters to live in? Take a look at the house. Is it plain and unadorned and uncomfortable? Are the surroundings bare and ugly? Have you had experience in building, painting, and planting? If you can help build a corn crib, you can make a porch over the front door or a sidewalk connecting the back door with the pump or the milk house. If you can help paint the barn, why not the house? If you can plant trees in the orchard, why not shrubs in the door yard, and vines over the porch? Don't think you must have expensive pillars and fancy railings. They will not look as well as rustic work or pillars of home-made cement. The vines will soon cover the porch with their greenery if given half a chance.
Have you a boys' club in your neighbourhood? Or a girls' club? You used to have a literary society in school, and it failed? Why was that? The boys didn't take any interest in it.
Why not have a club that the boys will take an interest in and a club that the girls will take an interest in? What kinds of clubs do boys like? Athletic clubs where they wrestle, box, turn handsprings, have jumping, skating, walking, and running matches, and play such games of skill and endurance as hare and hounds, pitching horseshoes, and baseball. They like all sorts of clubs that get real things done, like raising prize corn or cotton or pigs or training colts or steers or dogs. Boys and girls like to compete for prizes. How boys or girls will work to do something so much better than any other boy or girl in the crowd that the judges will award the prize to them. It is hard in contests like these to be able to walk up like a true sportsman and congratulate the winner. But a boy can learn to do it; so can a girl. All over the United States boys are banding together to raise better corn, better cotton, better chickens, better fruit. North, west, east, and south, thousands of boys are raising corn. They test their seed, prepare the soil, plant, cultivate, and harvest the crop, weigh it, take it to the exhibition where they compare it with other boys' crops, and see for themselves who has the best yield. One boy, a member of the Winnebago County Farmer Boys' Experiment Club took first prize of fifteen dollars in gold for the best ten ears of corn. This club has about eleven hundred members. There is a Winnebago County Girls' Home Culture Club with an equally large membership. These boys and girls are growing up to be good citizens right there in the country, where they were born. They don't have to go to the city to find education or good manners or a good time. The fathers and mothers, the school teachers, the ministers, and the county superintendent of schools all work together in Winnebago County, Ill., and they can everywhere.
The boys in your home school can form a Boys' Agricultural Club now. The first thing you need is information about other clubs. Your club will not be just like the others. It ought not to be. But if you know how the others are managed it will help you to manage yours. Send to the Secretary of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., and ask for Farmers' Bulletin No. 385 on Boys' and Girls' Agricultural Clubs. On page fifteen of this bulletin are suggestions as to an invitation to be sent out for the first meeting. If your teacher is willing you can hold the first meeting some Friday afternoon in the early spring at the school-house. If the teacher is not yet interested hold the meeting at some home in the neighbourhood. If you are acquainted with the county superintendent or the school commissioner, tell him about the club you want to start, and maybe he will arrange for the first meeting and get all the boys and girls in the county organized. You could have a local chapter of the club, with local exhibits and local prizes; then you could have a space at the county fair, and members of different clubs all over the county could compete for first prize.
The bulletin gives suggestions for a constitution, enrollment of members, and a scheme for cards on which to keep a record of the crop you are going to grow. There are rules, too, that each person who competes for prizes must observe.
A good many boys' clubs start in with growing a crop of corn, and girls' clubs with bread-making. They need not do these same things every year, although one can learn something new about growing corn, raising chickens, or making bread every year.
The country would be a better place to live in, if there were more boys' and girls' clubs.
The country would be a better place to live in if there were more song birds there. I know of a shrewd firm of real estate men, who wished to attract a certain class of residents to their suburban section, knowing that others would follow and property become more valuable. They laid out the woodsy tract with as little change from the natural conditions as they could, and still have a sanitary, convenient, and comfortable suburb. They did not chop down the trees in order to run straight roads through, nor did they fill in the small gully that wanted to be a brook. They encouraged the brook and ran their roadways so as to avoid the big trees and give each building site a character of its own and privacy. Then they put a man in charge with strict orders to make the place attractive to song birds; to protect and feed them; to destroy their enemies. He was also to foster and encourage such wild flowers and ferns as grew naturally in the woods, and to propagate and increase them so as to make the place a paradise. The man entered into the spirit of their idea and succeeded wonderfully. The real estate men advertised and the right people came and were convinced and bought homes there and "lived happy ever after."
How can boys and girls bring back our song birds? I will not say much about why we want them, for in enlightened America we take it for granted. Some people still want to be convinced that birds are of practical value. I will say only that the damage to crops by insects in nineteen hundred and four, is estimated at nine hundred and seventy-five million dollars. Investigations by scientists in state and nation all go to prove that a vast percentage of this loss could have been saved by birds. I wish every child would be ambitious to increase the bird life on every farm, on every village block. Here are some facts that ought to be convincing. I take them at random from my notes:
Kingbirds kill bot-flies.
Brown thrashers feed mostly on insects, especially white grubs and curculios.
Cat-birds, cuckoos and orioles are very important enemies of gypsy moth.
The red-eyed vireos are "premium caterpillar hunters."
Bluebirds board themselves. Eat cut-worms, furry caterpillars, and grasshoppers.
Wrens' food is ninety-eight per cent. animal matter.
Warblers, titmice, creepers, and nut hatches eat lice.
A pair of robins fed their nestlings this menu in three hours, bringing food every three minutes: sixty-one earth-worms, sixteen yellow grubs, thirty-eight other insects. Also four grasshoppers, several dragon flies, and a few moths.
Robins rank first as enemies of white grub.
Kingbirds protect poultry by driving away hawks; ninety-eight per cent. of their food is insects, mostly injurious sorts.
Woodpeckers destroy grubs in living trees. Phoebes catch flies, lighting on backs of cattle so as to be handy; also elm-leaf beetle, adults of canker-worms, cut-worms and gypsy.
Baltimore orioles are worth their weight in gold as destroyers of gypsy and brown-tail moths.
Rose-breasted grosbeaks cleaned out potato beetles.
Scarlet tanagers ate gypsy moths at the rate of thirty-eight per minute for eighteen consecutive minutes.
Thirty cedar waxwings will destroy ninety thousand canker-worms in a month.
So we can pile up the evidence in favour of the birds.
Two words tell us what to do to increase bird life: provide and protect. We must provide food, water, and nesting places. We must protect from disturbance, from natural enemies, from destruction by hunters who sell the feathers.
All over the country, laws to protect birds are being introduced into legislatures. Boys and girls may think that they cannot do much to help make laws. They can if their fathers are in the legislature as lots of fathers are, take the country over. Maybe your father does not know how much birds are worth. Get him to read the bulletins issued by the government. The boys who protect the birds around home will be the law makers some fine day themselves. They'll "see to it," then.
But now what can you do to-day? Is it winter? Feed the birds. There are many winter bird residents. Where are the insects in winter? Have they gone south? Not a bit of it. They lurk under the bark on your apple trees. They hide on the fence rails and under the leaves. Trust the birds to find them unless snow prevents. The extra feeding you give them will not toll them away from the insect food they love, but will keep them "on the job" and will keep them from starving in stormy weather. Water, too, they often suffer for in winter. Supply it in shallow basins and slightly warmed. Tie suet to the trees; sacks made of loose netting will hold nut meats for them. Scatter grain for the grain eaters on a platform.
In spring furnish nesting places and material, protection from cats and distressing disturbances; mud for robins, string for orioles, floss, feathers, and straw for others. Do something every day for your birds. Drinking fountains are a necessity, especially in towns where there is no running water. Shallow basins are best. They will often come right to the door and drink or bathe, unless frightened by some real or fancied danger. To make the birds tame you must make them feel safe, and supply their wants.
Not many girls wear birds' feathers in their hats. But many women do, and girls get to be women very soon. No one knows how many birds are slaughtered in America each year for hat trimmings. A few facts are available such as: seventy thousand skins were sent in four months from a small district on Long Island; one New York house contracts to furnish to Paris forty thousand skins in one season; four hundred thousand bird skins from America sold in one London auction room in three months. These numbers fairly stagger the reader. I don't know one American girl who would kill a bird. If every one of them would refuse ever to wear any bird feathers there would be a great falling off in this traffic.
Collecting birds' eggs and nests is still quite common, and should be discouraged. The present state of the bird population does not warrant the destruction of any except for the big museums. Their collectors are trained experts who collect only such birds as are needed for scientific purposes. They go at the right season to do the least damage, and they do not slaughter by wholesale.
Besides cats, which can be regulated to a certain extent in our homes, birds have other enemies. Crows, though valuable insect eaters, are bad nest robbers and have been caught in the act of killing nestlings and even small adult birds. Snakes eat both eggs and young. Guards for cats will keep out squirrels which molest the birds' nests. Ground nesting birds may be protected with wire netting. Where this has been tried, in no case did it cause birds to desert the nests.
Birds need thickets, hedge-rows and shrubbery for nesting places, hiding places, and shelter from storms.
Every farmer who kills the birds on his place justifies the destruction by the evidence that they eat fruit. True, some of them do. But if water is provided many of them prefer it to fruit juice. To preserve our strawberries and cherries, we should plant June berry and Russian mulberry, which the birds like better. Chokeberry, buckthorn, elder berry, and mulberry will attract birds away from blackberry and raspberry patches. Wild cherry will protect the grapes, as both ripen late.
The country would be a more attractive place to live in if there were more wild game. Thirty years ago, when I was a little girl in the middle West, my brothers used to shoot "prairie chickens" (grouse), quail (bob-white), wild geese, brant, wild ducks, and even bigger birds. But now the guns are all rusty, and the powder flask is empty. I came across the old wad-cutter in the attic and hardly recognized it.
Efforts are being made in several states to rear wild fowl in the barn yard. Bob-white, grouse, mallard, wood ducks, and Canada geese are being experimented upon. A measure of success has already been achieved, but more experience is necessary especially with regard to the feeding of the young birds.
Probably the wild fowl for young hunters to experiment with is wood duck or mallard. A man whose ten years' experience with raising wild fowl has earned him the title of expert, writes as follows: "I think it would be a most useful work to educate our young people up to the fact that with a little patience and a small outlay they can help to increase our supply of wild birds. For raising wood ducks, all one needs is a small pond or even an artificial tank surrounded by a few bushes enclosed by a wire fence. In one corner, place a box on a post three feet high with a cleated boardwalk leading up to a platform from which they can reach the entrance, which should be a round hole. Turn a pair of wood ducks into the enclosure the first of March, and with luck your duck will build her nest, and lay from eight to twelve eggs. In about four weeks the eggs will hatch and the troubles commence."
He goes on to say that some kinds of wild geese are comparatively easy to raise and that they do not require much of a pond, but ample grazing facilities, like their domestic relatives. Mallards, also, are very easy to raise.
As wild fowl bred in captivity bring a very good price and the demand is increasing with the spreading interest in the subject, raising wild fowl might be a source of income to an enterprising young man or woman.
All spring shooting of wild fowls ought to stop. Don't say, "If I don't shoot them, somebody else will." That is not the attitude of a good sportsman. Public opinion among boys can only be established by boys. If you don't believe in hunting in spring, when the ducks are laying or brooding the young, you can not only stop doing it, but you can influence others. Will you do this? To kill one mother duck this year means eight or ten less next year. It is a plain example in arithmetic to see what a big blunder you make if you shoot in spring.
If you live on a big farm or ranch well wooded and watered, your conditions are ideal for creating a private game preserve. If a few wild birds are known to be already at home on your place, encourage them. Let them breed in security and plant their favourite food crops. Small areas of land in various out of the way places can be ploughed and planted in spring to buckwheat and millet, wheat, rye, and barley.
The bob-white has become so rare that you will probably have to plant some seed birds, as they say. They can be bought for five to ten dollars a dozen. Care should be taken that the birds are not frightened when liberated. To spend ten dollars for birds, only to lose them by carelessness, is poor business. These suggestions are given by an experienced game warden: "Take the boxed birds out near some good, thick shelter where they can hide and gain confidence. Attach a long rope to a soap box, scatter grain about near the end of the box nearest the cover, and scatter sheaf grain along toward the cover. Take only three cocks and three hens from the shipping box and put them in the liberating box. Go some distance off and be deliberate. Let the quail get rested and quiet. Pull the long rope, lifting the box gently and steadily. The birds will see the grain and hop out. Watch them from your safe distance following the wheat toward the cover. Keep up the supply of wheat until they are accustomed to their new home, and can find their way back after roaming. Birds should not be planted later than May first."
The country would be a better place to live in the whole or part of the year or to visit for a day or a week or a month if there were more wild flowers there. Even the man who doesn't know one flower from another will acknowledge, if asked, that wild flowers make the woods and the roadsides and the meadows prettier to look at.
The country over, our loveliest wild flowers have met the same fate as the bright-feathered birds. They have been hunted for their blossoms and the gatherers have not cared whether they pulled the plants up by the roots or not. The case of trailing arbutus is a particularly sad one. In localities where it used to flourish, selfish and wanton hands have literally rooted it out until none remains.
Only lately has any effort been made to protect the wild flowers and multiply them. Now, in the general awakening of the public to the fact that we are blundering and wasteful, a widespread interest has grown up in saving the wild flowers.
In your own locality you can help this good work. Refrain from destroying the plants yourself. When you gather flowers in woods or meadow do so in moderation. A few loose, graceful sprays will give you as much pleasure as a huge bunch inartistically crowded into a vase. Have you not often seen children returning from a walk in the woods bearing handfuls of columbine? These frail blooms wilt in the hot sun, and the roadway is often strewn with forlorn bunches of them, dropped by tired children. How much better that each child should gather a few and put them all in a botanical case or wet paper to be distributed when they reach home. Those hundreds on the dusty road will never be visited by the ruby-throated humming-bird, nor set any seed for next year's flowers. Older boys and girls can do much to influence the younger ones to gather sparingly.
Another way to increase the wild flowers in your locality is to propagate them. Gather their seeds and plant them in your garden where you can protect the young seedlings from harm. Where they are big enough, set them out where they will have natural conditions. Or undertake a bit of wild gardening right in the woods or the roadside where the plants grow naturally. Clear out less desirable sorts, lessening the struggle for your favourites. Cultivate them a little. See that they do not suffer from too much sun or rain or drought.
If you know of a plot of woodland soon to be denuded or a piece of wild land to be improved, get permission to gather bulbs, roots, and plants there. If you know the flowers the year 'round, you will be able to recognize the lilies, the orchids, the blood roots, the wild ginger, hepatica, violets, and can transplant them to your own woods or garden.
It is October now, and this morning's paper had accounts of terrible forest fires raging in Minnesota. Hundreds dead, thousands homeless, and millions of dollars' worth of property wiped out.
Nobody knows, who has not fought fire, what a fiend the foresters have to deal with. I have looked up many forest fire statistics and I find always noted among the "sources of fires," this item: Forest Fires Set By Children. There may not be much that boys and girls can do to put in practice the big things we hear talked about under the name of conservation, but one thing you can certainly refrain from doing, and that is, setting a forest fire. A person who makes a fire in the woods is responsible to the community for that fire and its consequences. To boil a coffee pail, to broil bacon, to bake biscuits, to fry fish, to give comfort to the hunter, trapper, camper, or picnicker, many are the legitimate uses of a fire in the woods. No real sportsman forgets his fire. His last act before leaving a camp is to see that no vestige of it remains. He makes sure every spark is dead, then throws on another pail of water, and goes on with a light heart and a clear conscience. If you have ever left a fire in the woods, anywhere, your conscience ought to give you a good jab when you read of forest fires, though distant, a jab that will prevent your repeating the offence.
Weeding is the boy's job, isn't it? If only one could get some kind of inspiration into weeding, so as to rob the work of its drudgery!
If we must serve our time at weeding, let us at least weed intelligently. What is a weed anyhow? In Germany, I am told, the peasants call weeds "Unkraut". Since "Kraut" is cabbage, "Unkraut" must be weeds.
A weed is really a plant growing where we don't want it. The worst weed in a hill of four corn stalks is the fourth stalk of corn that crowds the others. The worst weeds in a row of beets are the little beet plants that crowd each other. What a plague they are!
Some of the plants we usually include among our "coarse native weeds" are grown in gardens in Europe. Mullein, for example, over there is called "the American velvet plant" and a well-grown specimen is really handsome.
If weeds are plants out of place there is much to be done by boys and girls in the way of ridding gardens, lawns, school grounds, and village streets of their overgrowth of weeds. If you clear out one thing put in something better or nature may put in some plant that will not please you. Save seeds from your own garden and drop them along the roadside.
The school grounds are the particular province of the school boys and girls. Join together to make the grounds more beautiful and there is no end to the improvements that will follow.
A lecturer once visited the school in a small village in the state of New York. On his way from the village to the school-house he was impressed with two things: first, the wonderful size and vigour of the burdocks that seemed to have possession of even the front yards on the business streets; and, second, the quantity of rubbish accumulated on the margin of the pretty little stream which wandered under the bridges of the town. Do boys and girls know what public spirit is? Do you know how your little village strikes a stranger? The lecturer was so struck by the sad state of the town that he made up his mind to talk to the school about it. He did. He found that public spirit was not dead there; it was only dormant. The boys and girls had passed by the burdocks so often during their growth that they had taken them for granted. They had so often thrown papers, broken dishes, worn-out baskets, barrels, and rubbish over the bridges that they forgot to notice how it looked. What else is an old creek like that good for anyhow? Can't go swimmin' in it.
Before the man finished his sociable little talk with the boys and girls he had organized the younger ones into brigades of twenty to make war on the burdocks. With the help of teachers and boys he mapped out the town and assigned given localities to certain groups. Each group had a captain with orders. The lecturer had a burdock plant brought in, a tremendous one, root and all, from the school yard. He showed the boys and girls how well adapted this weed is to make a living, how by means of burs it steals rides, travelling from place to place, dropping a few seeds here and a few there. He showed them the tough, long root and told them the plant's life history. Has the burdock any vulnerable spot they wondered? The only time when burdock is weak is when it comes up as a seedling. One scrape of the hoe would kill hundreds then.
Hearing what was up at school, an enterprising business man offered to give ten dollars to the squad of pupils who brought in the largest number of burdock plants. This added zest to the work and a generous emulation. Before the week was up, the town was rid of burdocks, and there were wagon loads of them withering on the vacant lot near the school. The squad that won the prize brought in upwards of seven hundred plants, root and branch. They donated the money to the school library.
The boys and girls in that village didn't need to be waked up but once. They went to work on the little stream. They had bonfires at the water's edge. They planted willows and other water loving trees on the banks, they asked the selectmen to pass a law to forbid the throwing of rubbish and sewage into the stream. They enforced the law themselves. Then they built two little dams, and made a skating pond right near the school house.
If there is any one thing that would make the country a better place to live in for some people, it would be to eradicate poison ivy. When it once gets possession of a fence row, it is an awful job to get it out. Cutting off the tops is about as effectual as cutting your hair. It grows again thicker than ever. The roots and the creeping stems run under ground and every cubic inch of soil has to be gone over.
A great many beautiful plants will have to be destroyed in our fence rows in getting out the poison ivy. But we can replace these, and by constant watchfulness keep the ivy out.
In some localities the village selectmen have seriously undertaken the eradication. Any one who has ever suffered will agree that the work ought to be taken hold of in a public way. Many people are immune. Those who know themselves to be so should undertake the work. A bounty is offered by some towns for uprooted plants.
The hands should be washed frequently with hot water and plenty of soap when working on poison ivy. Washable overalls and shirt should be worn, as the oil of the ivy gets on the garments and may poison any one who handles them.
Every boy and girl in the "mosquito belt" realizes keenly that the towns as well as the country would be better places to live in if there were no mosquitoes.
Some people do not believe that it is possible to lessen this plague, much less end it. But such a belief is pure ignorance. I know of an army post where in one season the mosquitoes were eradicated. It was easy there, because the post was isolated and because, when the commandant issued a general order that all rain barrels were to be covered or emptied, the people went right out and obeyed. You see, army people get a fixed habit of obedience. Then the health officer, who really had the matter most at heart, though backed by his superior, had squads of prisoners at work gathering up and carting off tin cans or other rubbish capable of holding water. Pools were drained. Sewer openings and ponds were oiled. Before the mosquitoes had fairly got out of winter quarters all the stagnant water was coated with an oil film. There was no use trying to lay eggs under those conditions, so they left for parts unknown. As mosquitoes cannot fly far unless carried by the wind, they undoubtedly perished just outside the gates, and the people came out and sat on their porches safe and happy. They were ashamed that they had grumbled when the orders came to cover the rain water barrels.
Mosquitoes breed in water. The wigglers of the watering trough or rain barrel are young mosquitoes. You can raise your own mosquitoes as well as your own chickens and pigs. A little precaution would save much annoyance. Neighbourhoods should unite to rid themselves of the pest. Boys can do the work required. The school children in Worcester, Mass., wage very effective war against mosquitoes every year under the guidance of their teachers. The saving in cost of netting and wire screens would almost pay the expense of a campaign against mosquitoes and flies.
After emptying or covering all the water receptacles on the place, it is well to place a few decoy pails in promising situations. When the mosquitoes have deposited their eggs, tip over the pails and that is the end of that lot. One female can produce four hundred eggs, so you see what a calamity it is for her young to come to maturity, which they may do in eight to ten days.
Mosquitoes have their natural enemies. Where areas of water are too large to oil, we should see to it that fish are plentiful, especially goldfish, sunfish, roaches, killies, and minnows. Toads, frogs, and lizards also prey on mosquitoes as do the nymphs of dragon flies and other water insects. Swallows and purple martins catch mosquitoes on the wing.
The house fly is no longer a mere nuisance, but is a menace to health. He is well named the typhoid fly and the filth fly. The boys and girls who help rid their neighbourhood of these disease-carrying pests are real patriots.
Flies are not a heaven-sent plague in this day and generation. Flies in the milk, flies in the pantry, flies on the kitchen door, flies buzzing about the table, are the obvious result of carelessness and mismanagement. What is more, the remedies are not hard to apply. The typhoid fly (house fly) breeds in horse manure. The adult fly feeds upon every known variety of filth as well as upon good food, but the undeveloped fly is a footless maggot and it breeds in your own and your neighbour's stable yard.
People will go on buying fly paper, fly poison, fly traps, screen doors, and window netting to keep flies out, but the very fly that has visited a typhoid patient to-day may to-morrow leave the imprint of his foul feet on the baby's face, or drown himself, but not his germs, in your gravy.
What does your father have a manure pile for? If he is a frugal farmer he expects to put it on his fields when the other work is out of the way, and plough it in. He knows the value of manure on fields. But does he realize that the best time to carry the manure out is while it is new? Every expert will tell him so and why. In the pile by the barn it lies and burns. Have you seen it smoke? Burnt manure is wasted fertilizer. When it rains, the valuable elements needed by the soil leach out and nourish the crop of "jimson weeds" and burdocks that will crowd round the barn yard next year.
Meantime the flies buzz round the manure pile. The worse it smells the better they like it. They are there for business. Eggs, thousands upon thousands of tiny flies' eggs, are deposited by industrious and prolific flies. A fly's egg! The hired man will laugh at you for bothering over a thing so insignificant. But when his wife comes down with typhoid and the flies come in and worry her, he will complain of his luck and drive out the flies, which go merrily forth to start little private epidemics all over the neighbourhood.
Destroy their breeding places. That is one remedy for flies. Trap them, poison them, discourage them.
Is it worth while for you to do this when the rest of the people do not? Yes, indeed. If you have very near neighbours, their flies may get to you to some extent, but with nothing to furnish breeding places, and no foul-smelling swill or decaying animal or vegetable stuff around, they will not be attracted to your place. Awaken the neighbour's interest in your "fly-destroying crusade." If you can reach results best by forming a club, organize and pass resolutions and wake people up to their responsibilities. This is practical work for a boys' good citizenship club.
I know a city boy who is fortunate enough to have a farm home to go to as soon as school closes in the summer. With his parents and brothers and sisters he lives the life of the farm boy, with enough of gardening, a little of chicken raising, one cow to milk, and a chance to measure his cunning against that of many "varmints" which would otherwise destroy his garden and steal his chickens. He knows how to use a gun, and when, and where. He can make a good trap, a scientific and humane trap, and he knows the ways of the two-or four-or six-footed enemies he is at war with. Between them and him there is a fair field and no favours, just as between one wild creature and another. If to-day he outwits a crow, to-morrow a skunk pays the crow's score with heavy interest by making a meal of a nestful of young chickens.
This boy has learned enough of the art of preparing skins to make those he gets salable, and he exhibits with just pride a handsome fur skating cap made by his mother out of skins of mink he has taken. His traps add something every year to his growing college fund.
There are a great many things about the business of trapping that seem very horrible and brutal to a sensitive person. Because many cruel men have gone into that life, which is a life of the greatest hardship and has little in it to encourage gentleness, we have rather taken it for granted that all trapping is unjustifiable and that a boy who wants to set traps is an inhuman monster and not to be tolerated in a civilized home. If fathers and mothers were all like my young friend's parents, they would see that trapping ought to be a part of a boy's training, just like using an axe, or a saw, or a gun.
Trapping everything would be bad business. You would not catch squirrels in a trap any more than you would shoot bluebirds or brown thrashers. One could easily damage his neighbourhood and himself by trapping the wrong things or trapping in the wrong way. A trapper who is a sportsman will see to it that his traps are of the right kind. I would not have a mouse-trap in the house that made a practice of catching mice by the foot or tail. There are traps of many kinds for a variety of purposes and the trapper must either catch his prey alive and provide a way of despatching it humanely or use a trap which is instantaneous in its deadly work.
Boys who have learned to trap in the natural, legitimate way do not become "fish butchers" or "game hogs" when they grow up. I once saw a picture of a game warden standing triumphantly beside a mound of dead crows, two thousand and twelve was the number, I believe. He had cunningly learned to imitate their call so successfully that they could not resist coming within range of his deadly weapon. Crows may be harmful to wild fowl but no boy with right instincts would be guilty of an act so base as this, so unbecoming a sportsman and a gentleman.
Getting rid of the animals which prey upon orchard, garden, and chicken roost is, without question, one of the ways of making the country a better place to live in. Trapping may be regarded as clean sport when done for this purpose, or for food when needed. Catching animals alive for the sake of taming and training them as pets is treated in another chapter and has its own rules.
There are a number of fur-bearing animals which, though too shy to venture inside the barn yard, prey so successfully upon the less fortunate ones, that it has become our duty to take up warfare against them. This duty is all the more heavily laid upon us because, in the act of civilizing the woods and converting the hills and valleys into cultivated fields and pastures, we have destroyed the natural hiding places of the wild things and "upset the balance." If we were suddenly to abandon this country, it would not be many generations before the buffalo, the wild pigeon, and the wild turkey would return to their haunts, the forests would recover the hills, the potato beetle would go back to its Colorado weed, and some natural enemy would control the San José scale and the English sparrow and reduce them to their natural places.
In some localities trapping of fur-bearing animals is still a money-making small industry and if properly carried on will lead to no evil results. The more a boy knows about the habits of the animals he seeks to outwit, the greater will be his chances of a capture, and when he knows a little he will want to know more. He will learn that there are rules in this game as well as in games with his human fellows, and that there are things "that no man would do," and pretend to self-respect. A knowledge of woodcraft is indispensable to the trapper and helps him to take care of himself and act with good judgment in cases of emergency.
A boy that sets a trap takes a certain responsibility. If he fails to visit his traps he breaks a rule of the game. A live animal in a cage trap begins to suffer very soon for water and for food. An animal in a steel trap, if not dead, will often pull or even gnaw off his injured leg, and escape. His tragic story may often be read in his footprints in the snow. If trapping for skins you must take them off while fresh, as they taint very quickly and may be ruined by delay.
The boy that catches a mink is a pretty lucky boy in these days when those wily little robbers have grown so scarce. The price of mink fur made into muffs and collars is so high as to make a mink skin worth trying for. I can imagine the surprise and well-earned triumph of my young trapping friend when, after trying for a year or two to solve the mystery of the disappearance of his thoroughbred chickens, he finally succeeded in capturing a fine mink. A friend of his to whom he had taught all he could of the art of trapping caught another. And this happened within the city limits of the nation's capital! Who says now that the mink has disappeared?
The mink is a flesh-eater, and lives on what he can catch, varying his bill of fare with frogs, snakes, birds, mice, muskrats, and fish. It is always open season for trout in the mink's code of laws and though he is not a water animal his home is more than likely to be near a trout stream, on the bank, in a well-concealed place. It is not fair to trap mink in the breeding season, which is April or May. The young are at the mercy of all sorts of flesh-eaters, including their own fathers, who are a most undiscriminating sort. There ought to be some form of guarantee to a mink mother that while she is foraging for food for her young she will not be enticed into a trap. Later, when she goes a-hunting on her own account and the chances are even, she is legitimate prey for the trapper.
Steel traps are best, say the experts, and they should be cunningly concealed. Gouge out a sort of hole in the bank, conceal the trap at the front, and put the bait farther in so that the trap must be passed to reach the bait. Muskrat flesh, fish, or other meat is the bait used. A common practice is to scorch the bait, to make the odour more pervasive and attractive. The price of fresh mink skins varies according to size and condition from two dollars and a half to four dollars.
The last thing you would expect of a skunk is that he should be popular among the girls. But under the seductive title of Alaska sable, the fur of the plain Jersey or York State skunk is worn with satisfaction by ladies of good sense and good taste. A skunk's pelt is worth two dollars and a half or more and although he is of undoubted value to the farmer as a destroyer of insect pests, I shall not undertake his defence. A cloud of witnesses would rise up to recount their losses from the marauding skunk. His fondness for poultry would be mere circumstantial evidence that he is an enemy of the wild birds as well, but we have direct evidence enough to convict and condemn him. Because of his unusual weapon, used only when hard-pressed in an unequal battle, a good deal of special precaution has to be taken when trapping Mephitis for his fur. The least taint of the unmistakable odour ruins the skin, as no cleansing compound has been invented strong enough to remove it or drown it. It is said on good authority that the skunk seldom besprinkles itself when discharging its "rear battery."
Skunks are not very clever nor very swift. They go about at night for the most part, or early evening. The young are born, six to nine in a litter, in April or May. The nests are hidden in holes in hollow trees, among rocks, or in the ground. The young ones frequently follow the old ones all summer or even longer, little realizing that this is a dangerous habit. By tracking them from the scene of their nocturnal visit to or from the stream they run to daily for water, one may find the hiding place. A clever trapper succeeds in capturing a whole family ofttimes by simply making the path the skunks follow more distinct, treading down the grass, and even setting up sticks to guide them along toward the place they wish to go. Traps with bits of meat for bait are set at intervals along the path. A snare and spring pole are said to insure no bad consequences. One author advises the hunter that striking a sudden blow near the tail paralyzes the ejecting muscles. No doubt! But in the meantime what is the skunk doing?