Part 13

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Ratting without Ferrets