The Heart of the Wild: Nature Studies from Near and Far

by S. L. Bensusan

HOB, THE FERRET

If you left the lane for the footpath that passes along the wood-side, you could see the keeper’s cottage in a large clearing away to the right. In the days that belong to this story it was a pretty place, thatched and creeper-covered, with a modest outhouse, one or two sheds, and some ground that had been reclaimed from the wood when the eighteenth century was still young. The flower-garden held half a dozen beehives, and there was a small paddock where a few pheasants were raised under domestic hens. In a corner of the paddock stood a useful ferret-hutch, standing a little above the ground, with sloping runs from the entrances to a little piece of the meadow round the hutch, fenced round with posts and wire-netting about a foot high. A large elm tree stood by the side of the enclosure, and one of its branches was used by the old keeper as his vermin larder. Here one saw stoats, weasels, hedgehogs, and sometimes a polecat, together with magpies, hawks, and, one regrets to add, an owl. As soon as the old man had trapped or shot one of his real or fancied enemies, its dead body was nailed to the branch and, in that corner of a southern county, traps were seldom idle or empty.

Some week or ten days before Hob was born, the room in the hutch where his mother slept was carefully cleaned, supplied with a new hay bed, and closed. Hob entered the world in complete darkness in company with four brothers and sisters. Not only was their room void of light, but their eyes were closed. Their mother fed and tended them very jealously. Had her sleeping-place been entered in the first month of their life, while they were sightless and helpless, their mother would have killed them, for that is ferret law. In those early days they were particularly ugly, and would squeak faintly as though to emphasise their distaste for their surroundings; but their mother found plenty of fresh milk or porridge waiting for her when she went out to eat in the apartment next her hut, together with odd luxuries in the shape of freshly killed mice or rats, or young game birds and chickens that had met an untimely death. So the babies were bound to thrive. One fine June morning the old keeper found them in the ferret’s dining-room lapping milk by their mother’s side. Thereupon he opened the part of the hutch that had been closed down so long, cleaned it thoroughly, and put in a fresh bed, so that Hob and his brethren returned to a clean home and proceeded to live their life in earnest. Within a week they were playing for the greater part of the day in the enclosure round their hutch, and this early exercise made them strong and active, so that none of the litter moped and pined and died, as baby ferrets will when they are badly housed and have no place for exercise. They still slept in their old room, but paid small heed to their mother, who, for her part, seemed to have lost the most of her care for them. When the youngsters were not racing about, playful as fox cubs, they were eating diligently, and in those days they never failed to receive three meals. Milk diet was their usual fare, but now and again their master would tie a piece of fresh meat in some form to the wooden stake in the middle of their playground, and they would attack together, each trying in vain to carry it off to the hutch to devour at leisure.

When they were three months old, Hob’s brothers and sisters were taken away and sent in a neat box to another county in response to an advertisement, and Hob owed his immunity from travel to the fact that he was the best of the litter, and was destined for ferreting on the home farm. He was transferred to another hutch, where he lived by himself; but when he had his first sporting day, it was in his mother’s company. He never forgot the morning, for it brought experiences that were new and unpleasant. In the first place he had no breakfast, though he had been ready for it soon after daylight. Secondly he was muzzled, and this was an indignity to which he never learned to submit without a struggle. The muzzling was done with strong thread that was tied in slip knots, and went round the neck and over the mouth in very painful fashion. Most people would have hesitated to muzzle a ferret that had never been used, but the keeper was a very old-fashioned person, and held that the lesson of restraint could not be learned too soon. When he had made Hob perfectly helpless in the fashion hinted at, he lowered him into a bag full of straw, where his mother, whose mouth, like Jericho of old, was straightway shut up, was already burrowing. Then the old man shouldered the sack, picked up a ditching-shovel and, whistling his retriever, set out to accompany one of the sons of the house to a bank where rabbits had been playing havoc with some green corn.

The bank was sandy and had a high slope, so it could be attacked at any time of year; and when the mother ferret started in very confidently, Hob followed her down the dark passage to a point where it branched out. There he left her and went forward alone, for he scented a familiar odour. He knew the smell of rabbit very well, and found the taste was pleasant; he required no teaching to tell him there were rabbits in the burrow, and that they were within reach. Darkness could not baffle him, and though the path he followed soon branched in several directions, he did not hesitate, but chose one that brought him suddenly to his quarry. At the sight of her enemy, Bunny bolted incontinently and sought the outer air; there was a muffled report a moment later, and Race the retriever went down to the bottom of the bank and picked her up dead as mutton, so cleanly shot behind the ears that she may be said to have died painlessly.

Of these matters Hob knew nothing; he was following his quarry more slowly, and by the mouth of the hole he put up another rabbit that bolted down the bank before he could reach it. He peeped out of the opening, watched the headlong rush, heard the gun go off again, and saw the runner turn a somersault. Then his master came forward, untied the muzzle, and rewarded him with a piece of newly killed rabbit. When he had eaten his fill he was put back into the bag, where he went to sleep, and knew no more until he woke to find himself being transferred to his hutch. His mother, who had done a hard morning’s work, received very careful treatment, her feet being bathed in warm water; but Hob, who had not worked long, needed nothing more than rest to restore him to his usual activity.

Though he did not know it, Hob had earned golden opinions already; he had shown all the instincts of the polecat, of which fierce animal a ferret is no more than a domesticated species. So he was taken out from time to time through the summer, his hours of service being gradually lengthened, and he was always rewarded with part of a fresh kill. So keen was his hunting instinct that when he did not get his breakfast, he understood the reason for its absence and would run round the hutch in a state of great excitement when he heard his master’s approach. By the time summer and autumn had passed and the thick growths had died down from the hedgerows, leaving the burrows plainly to be seen, Hob was as reliable a ferret as ever bolted rabbit. He would run along a hedge, testing every hole in turn, climbing up and down and missing nothing. If he disregarded an earth, there was no need to worry about it—Bunny was not at home. If, on the other had, after a moment’s hesitation, he ran in, the appearance of a rabbit was usually a matter of moments. He never made a mistake, and if rabbits would not bolt, the weather rather than the ferret was to blame.

Winter brought Hob his first experience of any note, and gave him his first intimate knowledge of wild life. Snow had fallen heavily, making the landscape one vast study in white, and leaving tell-tale tracks of bird and beast all over the snow. It was easy enough to see where the rabbits were living, even if you did not come upon them sitting outside their burrows and staring rather disconsolately across the land. It chanced at the time that two of the younger sons of the house, only lately promoted to the unrestricted use of 28-bore guns, decided to go ferreting, and took Hob with them. One was quite certain that he understood how a muzzle was put on, but his belief in his own intelligence was scarcely justified, and before Hob had gone to earth five minutes he had worked the objectionable restriction from his jaws, and celebrated the event by killing his first rabbit. He stayed awhile to enjoy a meal that was as pleasant as it was unexpected, and then proceeded to see what was happening in the outer world. His path led him to peep out from a hole under the roots of a beech tree. A net had been placed there by the young amateurs, who were compelled by the nature of the ground to face the other way; but one turned round in time to see Hob, quite free from a muzzle, regarding him with serious interest. He made an effort to pick the ferret up, but being unskilled, forgot to use the dead rabbit that chanced to lie beyond the net as a lure, and instead of seizing Hob with a firm, steady grasp, snatched at him nervously. Very disgusted, the ferret made a snap at the uncertain fingers, returned to the earth, found the dead rabbit that lay there, and made another heavy meal. Then, feeling quite tired, he laid himself up against his victim’s warm fur and slept peacefully. The ferret that came down on a line to inquire after him reported progress, but failed either to wake Hob up or to reach the rabbit lying in an end-hole behind him, and as digging operations were impossible because of the thick roots, the sportsmen returned disconsolate. Even then, had they blocked up all the exits, they might have recovered their ferret with the next day; but they did no more than net the ones they could see, and it was by the small one they had overlooked that Hob entered the world at large on the following morning.

For him it was a very pleasant place to live in. On all sides there were rabbits only waiting to be killed and eaten, and to do him justice, Hob did not keep those that were within reach very long waiting for their fate. Freedom brought a quick reversion to savagery, all the instincts of the wild, free-living polecat revived in him at once. He devoted his first free day to the systematic chase of a family of rabbits right up to the end-hole of their run, from which there was no escape. Then with horrid persistence he killed one after the other, biting them behind the head and taking nothing more than a little blood from each. When the slaughter was over, he slept among the dead rabbits—clearly he knew nothing of the fear of ghosts. In the meantime his loss had been reported to the old keeper, who put a line ferret into the hole where he was first lost, and then dug right down to the dead rabbit in spite of obstacles; but of course he was too late, and now he could do no more than keep a sharp look-out when he went on his rounds, and give the farm-hands notice that a jack-ferret was loose, and might be found at any moment, and that a reward of two shillings awaited the finder. But for all that a price was put upon his head, Hob was not destined to be secured until he had spent two or three weeks at large, and had grown as fat as the aldermen of the comic press.

In the days and nights of his freedom, Hob had many adventures. It became his habit to hunt at night, and many a time the despairing cry of a pursued rabbit woke the wood when all its denizens seemed to be asleep. Though he could not have run a rabbit down in a race, he succeeded by reason of the terror he imposed upon his quarry. Poor Bunny would race about at three-quarter speed, shrieking as she went. He would pursue silently, remorselessly, never losing the scent until his victim would either stop short or would run aimlessly about in a circle, while he waited for a few moments before rushing forward and inflicting the sharp bite that brought the hunt to an end. He soon ceased to pursue for the mere gratification of his appetite; he would kill for the sake of killing. But towards morning, when the birds were proclaiming the coming of another day, he would drag a victim to a burrow, eat his fill and go to sleep.