"We'll kill them."
"If they don't get us first," Bill said.
It was an awesome and bloody slaughter. The fulmars and gannets, most of the gulls, some of the terns, were either wiped out or harried off the island in a single season. And the island became a heaving, moving, revolting mass of rats, and nothing but rats. They attacked us on sight, from sheer hunger. Not a blade of grass grew anywhere on the island, and rats are not grass eaters as an ordinary thing. There was one hopeful sign. They were beginning to eat each other.
Day after day we were caged in our barracks. The constant squealing and scratching under the barracks was bad enough. What made us desperate was the fact that they had gnawed a way into the store room and most of the packaged food was gone. We still had some smoked fish hung on the rafters, and a few salted fulmars in the barrel, but that was all. It was then that we remembered the two-way radio, marked "Use in emergency only". Bill said, after weighing all the evidence coolly and carefully, that this here, in his opinion, was an emergency.
I got WFI mainland and finally persuaded them to put me in touch with Carter, Bird Stations Ecologist. I told him we were having a little trouble with the genus Rattus, and would he, for God's sake, do something about it, quick. I can still near him laughing. It was a while before he could speak at all.
"Keep them at bay, general. I'll be over early tomorrow morning."
I don't believe any men have ever been so happy to see Carter as we were.
"They'll balance," he said. "Starvation will do its work. I've brought along a couple of pairs of barn owls. They'll help a lot. I see you read that ecology book. Good job. Station virtually wiped out. I'm sending supplies over in a week's time. Anybody wants to know, you're supposed to be helping extend and restore the tern and gull colonies. Wouldn't be a bad idea to try a few other animal experiments. Milder, though. Smaller scale. Send canvas for a sail too."
He was gone before we could answer. The small freighter put in July fifteenth. She had no cargo of processed birds to take back, of course. The captain detailed a few men to unload our supplies, and we helped them eagerly. There were six calves and heifers, two cows and a bull, five pigs, one boar and two sows, several dozen hens and a rooster. Best of all, there was a big case containing seeds: corn, barley, oats, seed potatoes, melons, beets, kale, dozens of others. A plow and two draught horses, mare and stallion. Several pounds of rat poison. A hand forge and several tons of coke. Iron. A hundred pounds of linen twine for nets, as well as ropes of all sizes. Canvas. Tools of all kinds. A big medical kit.