Lives of the Fur Folk

by Maud D. Haviland

As a rule a doe rabbit is the gentlest of wild things; but motherhood will nerve the most timid, and Brownie's whiskers twitched as she faced the foe who was stealing towards her in the darkness. The rat cried out, and was answered by three or four of his comrades, who crowded after him. They were hungry, and very fierce, for they had already tasted blood and knew that a meal awaited them if they could win it.

In mortal terror Brownie struck out right and left with her teeth, and sundry squeaks told her that her snaps had taken effect. Two rats clung to her on either side, but hampered as she was, she kept the rest at bay, for while she struggled they could not press past her into the nest.

Just now the rabbits were in desperate straits. Two of the weaklier youngsters had been killed, and many more were badly bitten. Gradually the rats were driving them out as wolves drive sheep. All alone in the distant nesting burrow, Brownie faced her assailants and held her body as a living shield to protect her little ones; but she was failing fast. The airless darkness around her seemed full of noise, hot gasping breathing, and snapping teeth.

Suddenly a strong pungent odour drifted down the passage—an odour which every rabbit knows and fears; and Brownie made a last despairing struggle, for her nose told her as well as her eyes could have done that a stoat was loping towards the scene of the fight. The rats rallied their forces in alarm, and the rabbits stampeded anew, for both knew that their most deadly enemy was hunting through the warren.

But for once in a way the stoat brought salvation to the rabbits on Garry's Hill, for a rash rat snapped, and his teeth met in the newcomer's shoulder. Instantly four stiletto points pierced his brain—he tottered round in a circle, sobbed and died. The stoat, with his appetite whetted, passed on and drove into the press of rats. They clung round him like leeches, but the place was very narrow and they could not reach his flanks. In that face-to-face combat in the darkness the odds were with the stoat. A rat's courage is indomitable and his teeth are sharp; but between them and those of the stoat there is all the difference between a scythe and a bayonet. Both are good cutting instruments, but the latter is fashioned expressly for war and the former is not.

The stoat went into the fray joyously. He slew two and drove the others back. Then, for he never noticed Brownie trembling in her nursery, he glided off and made his way to the main dormitory, where he found another party of rats assembled. These fled before him into a 'hide-up,' whither he followed them, and although he sustained two or three wounds himself, he mortally wounded another. The tables were now turned with a vengeance. The rats were in a worse plight than their whilom victims; for wet, starving and bewildered, they were hunted through a strange warren by their most implacable enemy. The rabbits had one and all retreated to the remotest corners which they could find, but the stoat heeded them not, for he killed among the panic-stricken rats for the sheer lust of killing. Even if by chance he crossed a rabbit's trail and followed it up, he invariably stumbled across some terrified rat who sat and jibbered in the darkness.

At last he was satiated and retired to Fluff-Button's dormitory to sleep. Two rabbits were dead besides Brownie's litter, who had paid the grim penalty which is always paid by nestlings whose nursery is discovered. Of the rats, two had been wounded and slain by their fellows; the stoat had accounted for four; as many more had bolted from the burrow; and the survivors, some six in number, cowered in an old nursery as far as possible from their enemy.

The stoat slept until the day was well advanced towards noon, and neither rat nor rabbit dared to stir lest he should wake and slay once more. At last he rose and glided from the burrow, and then—and not until then—did they venture to leave their hiding-places.

So that was the end of the great invasion of Garry's Hill, but it was long before the rabbits settled down afterwards. As for the remnants of the rats, they retreated to the little-used end of the warren and established a system of tiny passages of their own, running among those of the rabbits. They lived on terms of armed neutrality with their unwilling hosts—never daring to attack a full-grown buck or doe, although not so scrupulous with regard to nestlings; and often on warm summer evenings, if you hide behind the brow of the hill and wait, you may see the rats and rabbits feeding and playing side by side.