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.