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CHAPTER VI

I trust that, in the five chapters I have written, I have said enough to give some of my scholars a slight taste and liking for the profession I am advocating, and in some small degree have weaned their young affections from such pernicious pastimes as studying classical authors, doing sums, and cutting their names on their desks. If I have not done this I have written to little purpose, and I fear the next chapter will damp off a few who have only followed me and my dogs on fine days in pleasant paths; but I may as well tell you at once that life is no more all beer and skittles in rat-catching than it is in such minor professions as the Army, the Church, the Bar, school-keeping, etc.; and just to see if you are "real grit," boys, I will show you another picture.

Jack, get the ferrets while I let the dogs out. We must go and see if we can find a few rats, for it is a week since the ferrets had flesh, and we shall have them getting ill; and, Jack, bring four in the little bag, and put that inside your game-bag, for it looks like rain, and I don't like to see them half-drowned. Yes, it does look like rain, though as yet it is only a dull, misty, chilly day in mid-November down here in the country, but in London it is a thick black fog, and all work is being done by gaslight. It is bad and depressing here, but ever so much worse there; so cheer up, dogs, and step out, Jack. We will go down by the beck and home by the clay-pits, for I know of no other place near where we are so likely to find a few rats, and I don't want to make a long day of it.

Go over the bridge, Jack. You take that side with Chance and a young one, and I will do this side with the other dogs. Hie in, dogs! Search him out, lads! And on we go, but in two miles we only kill a water-hen that Pepper catches as it rises out of some sedges, and which goes into my bag to replenish the ferrets' larder. The mist hangs low, the bushes are wet, the ground soft, and there is a dreary sigh in the wind. The cattle are eating fast, as they always do before rain; and the sheep, startled by the sight of the dogs, caper and jump as they gallop all down the meadow; and again their playfulness warns me of a wet tramp home. Some young colts stand at the door of an open shed, dull and depressed looking, and the horses ploughing on the sides of the hill send up a thick steam. No birds twitter or sing, no insects hum, distant sounds are muffled and indistinct. The teams in the waggons on the road hard by creep along and take little notice beyond a toss of the head at the carter's whip as he walks beside them with a heavy step cracking it. The only brisk thing to be seen is the doctor's gig as it whisks past.

"Hie up, dogs! shake yourselves and don't go to sleep! Come over, Jack; I have had enough of this brook; and if we don't find at the clay-pits, home we go." And we trudge off to some ponds half a mile further away. They are well-known to both men and dogs, and the latter bolt on ahead and arrive first; and when we come up we find them all clustered round a hole in a high bank 'midst thick dripping bushes. In goes a ferret, but not in the way I like to see. There is no hurry, no ecstatic wriggle of the tail as it slowly draws itself into the hole. Then all stand round expecting to see a rat take a header into the pond; but no, five minutes pass, and Pepper begins to move, and is told to "stand." Ten minutes pass, and Jack gets restless. Fifteen minutes, and I begin to shift my feet, which are planted deep in sticky mud by the side of the pond, and just then the first drops of rain appear. Ah, there is the ferret! Jump up and get it, Jack. But before he can do so, it has drawn itself into the hole backwards, which means that it has killed a rat inside and that it only came out to tell us so, and that it was going back to have a good long sound sleep curled up by the rat's warm body. There is nothing for it but to dig it out; and oh, what a dig, all among roots and thorns on the sloping sides of the pond, in thick sticky clay, with the rain coming down in a steady pour! Jack hunches his back and leans against a tree, Pepper and Wasp wander away down a ditch and scratch for an hour at a drain that has a rabbit in it, and the old dogs sit and watch me and drip and shiver. I dig here, I dig there; I slip and fall on the bank; the water mixed with yellow clay runs up my arm from the spade, and yet that beastly ferret sleeps peacefully in its warm bed. I lose the hole, come down on roots as thick as my leg and stones that strike fire as the spade strikes them; and so two hours of discomfort to all drift by, and I am just feeling about for the last time with the spike end of the spade, when I again hit off the hole and, opening it out, come upon a nice warm rat's nest made of leaves, with the ferret curled up snugly with a dead rat.

"Home, dogs, home! Cheer up, Jack! Cold are you, and wet? Well, never mind; only two miles, and we will walk fast. Pepper, Pepper, Wasp, Wasp, where on earth have you got to? Ah, there you are, and a nice mess you have made of yourselves trying to scratch out a hole five hundred yards long. Come along all!" And off we tramp, Jack and I in the middle of the road, splish splash at every step, the water squirting high up our gaitered legs, and the dogs, with drooping tails, dripping coats and woe-begone looks, coming along behind us in Indian file close under the shelter, such as it is, of the hedge.

We pass the postman, who only nods, and meet a flock of sheep all draggled and dirty. An empty cart with a sack over the seat stands at the pot-house, and pigs wander listlessly about the yard with their backs arched up. Under the waggon-shed some cocks and hens stand each on one leg, with their tails drooping, apparently too disgusted to prune their feathers and fly up to roost in the rafters. The smoke beats down from the chimneys and gets lost in the wind and rain which buffets and pelts at our back. Cold spots begin to be felt at the bend of our arms and knees; then a shiver runs down the back, which developes into a trickle of water that at last gets into our boots and goes squish, squish, at every step, and at last oozes over the tops; and our teeth chatter with cold, for now here and there among the rain-drops appear a few flakes of snow, which rest on the mud of the road for a second, and then melting, add to the deep slush that trickles down the hill by our side. At every open shed the dogs shelter a minute, shake themselves like dripping mops, and with arched backs stand on three legs and shiver; but we whistle them on and at last reach home. After throwing a good bundle of dry straw on the kennel benches and feeding dogs and ferrets, Jack and I get under shelter and soon find ourselves in dry clothes before a good fire, feeling a little swollen and stiff about our faces and hands, and much inclined for forty winks.

The wind howls in the chimney, lashes the bare branches of the trees, rattles the window frames, and appears angry that it cannot get at us, and the rain drives in fitful gusts against the windows, and hisses in the big wood fire on the hearth; and as I sit in my snug arm-chair, I dimly feel that the external storm adds greatly to the internal comfort, and then I fancy I nod off to sleep, for I think no more till supper is announced, and hunger and my wife stir me up to consciousness again.

Having finished a good supper and got my pipe drawing beautifully, I remember one or two things that I think the student should be told. The first is, never put a line on a ferret when ratting. It hampers a ferret in a narrow, twisting, turning rat's hole, and cutting into the soft earth at the turns soon brings the ferret to a dead stop. Then rats' holes are chiefly in hedge-banks, which are full of roots, and the line is pretty sure to get twisted round some of these, and then it will be a long dig to free it. Remember, too, a ferret has to go down the hole and face a beast nearly as big as itself, with teeth like lancets and with courage to use them, and so should be as free as possible; and lining a ferret is about equal to setting a student with the gloves on to fight against another without them. Then some way back I mentioned ferrets' bells. They are little hollow brass balls with an iron shot in them that make a pretty tinkling sound, and are supposed to be tied round the ferret's neck. In my opinion, if you put a bell on it, you may as well put the ferret in the bag and keep it there. The theory about bells is, that a ferret running down a hole jingling its bell will fill a rat with fear and make it bolt, but this is all nonsense; rats are not so easily frightened. Again, it is said that if a ferret comes out of a hole in a thick hedge unseen, the bell will let you know where it is; but I must say I never lost a ferret in a hedge or felt the want of a belled one. I consider a bell a useless dead weight on a ferret, and the cord that goes round its neck to fasten it is apt to get hitched on to a root and hold the ferret a prisoner. A bell is only good for a sharp shopman to sell to a flat.

I need hardly say, never muzzle a ferret when rat-catching. It would be brutal not to let the ferret have the use of its teeth to protect itself with. Muzzling ferrets appertains solely to rabbiting, but it is useful to know how to do it. Take a piece of twine a foot long, double it, and tie a loop at the double. Tie the string round the ferret's neck, with the loop on the top; bring the two ends down under the chin and tie them together there; pass them over the nose and tie them there, shutting the mouth tight; pass one string along the nose, between the eyes, through the loop on the top of the neck, and bending it back, tie it to the other loose string from the knot on the top of the nose. Cut the ends off, and, provided you have not made a lot of "granny" knots, your muzzle will keep on all day. There are other ways of doing the trick, such as passing the string behind the ferret's dogteeth, bring it under the jaw, then over the nose, on the top of the neck; tie it there and again under the neck. I hate this plan, and have seen a ferret's mouth badly cut by the string. I have heard of another plan which is too brutal to mention. Cut the muzzle off directly you have done with it, for I don't suppose a ferret likes having its mouth tied up any more than you or I should.

Never wantonly hurt any animal, especially those that work for you and suffer in your service. Just think of the amount of pluck a ferret shows each time you put it into a rat's hole. Fancy yourself in its place, going down a lot of dark crooked passages that you don't know, only just wide enough to allow you to pass, and have to face a beast somewhat like yourself and as big, that you know will attack you. Why, if ferrets got V.C.'s, they would, on high days and holidays when they wished to display them all, have to employ a string of sandwich-men walking behind them with the boards covered with V.C. Three or four times in my life I have had ferrets die of the wounds they have received from rats. I have had them in hospital for weeks, and I have had them blinded. Speaking of blind ferrets, I am not much of an oculist, but I don't believe a ferret can see in the dark. I never could find any difference between the way my blind ferret worked in a hole and that of one with good eyes; in fact, my blind ferret was as good a little beast as ever killed a rat, and she did kill many a score after she lost both eyes. I believe a ferret when in a hole uses a sense we don't possess – I mean the sense of touch with the long nose whiskers.

Some years ago the Field opened its pages to a long discussion on the subject of ferrets sucking the blood of their victims after they have killed them. Writers pretending to know all about it said they did do so. These men are to be pitied, not laughed at, for you see in the days of their youth "Rat-catching for the Use of Schools" was not written, and therefore they had not learnt better. A ferret no more sucks the blood of the things it kills than a dog does. If you doubt this, give a fresh-killed rat to a ferret, let it fasten on it, and then peep at the corners of its mouth, and you will find an opening there into the mouth, out of which blood would flow if the ferret had it in its mouth; and look down its throat, you will not find blood in it, nor will there be blood on the portion of the rat that has been held in its mouth. No, people are misled by a ferret sending its teeth deep home in the flesh and making a sucking sound as it with difficulty breathes through its nose and the corners of its mouth. If you watch a ferret after it has killed a rat, it will, as soon as it is sure the rat is dead, begin chewing at the skin of the head or throat till it has made an entrance, and will then eat the flesh.

To finish this chapter, I will tell you a story which you are never to put into practice. Some long time ago I found myself far from home in a country village, and having nothing to do, I went for a walk, and soon came upon a brother professional rat-catcher; and thinking I might learn a wrinkle from him that would come in useful, I joined him and carefully watched him and his dogs. I saw at once that three of the latter were very good and up to their work; but there was a fourth, a nondescript sort of beast with a long tail, that appeared quite useless; and I observed with amusement that directly the man put a ferret into a hole, the dog tucked its tail tight between its legs and went and stood well out in the field. I asked the man why he kept such a useless beast, and with a chuckle he answered, "Well, mate, I'll own up he ain't much to boast on for rat-killing, nor yet for looks, but he has his use like some other of we h-ugly ones. You see, sir, I've got one or two ferrets as won't come out of a 'ole, but stand a peeping at the h-entrance and waste a lot of time. Then that 'ere dawg comes in useful. I catches him, lifts him up, and sticks his bushy tail down to the ferret, who catches tight hold, and I draws it out. Nothing ain't made for nothing, and I expect that dawg was made for drawing ferrets." The man may have been right, but I was quite sure the unfortunate dog did not take an active pleasure in his vocation.

There, young gentlemen, if you have well digested that chapter and forgotten the story at the end, you can put up your books and form up for your usual walk to the second milestone and back again; but before leaving, let me point out to you, Croker, minor, that if that caricature I have observed you drawing behind your book is meant for me, it is, like most things you do, incorrect; my nose is not so long, and I part my hair on the left side, not the right.

CHAPTER VII

Rat-catching and rabbit-catching are two distinct professions, but the greater part of the stock-in-trade that serves for one will answer for the other, and it is as well for the professional to be master of what I think I may call both branches of his business. A rat-catcher who did nothing but kill rats and refused a day's work with the rabbits would be like a medical man who would cut off limbs but would not give a pill, or a captain of a sailing-vessel who would not go to sea in a steamer; besides in these days it is the fashion to jumble up half a dozen businesses under one head and name. Just look at what the engineer does. Why, he is nowhere if he is not (besides being ready, as the engineer of the old school, to make railways, etc.) a chemist, an electrician, a diplomat, a lawyer, a financier and a contractor, and even sometimes an honest man. If you are not in the fashion you are left behind as an old fogey, and so in this chapter we will discuss the art of rabbit-catching; and I trust all schoolmasters will furnish you, their students, with the opportunity of putting in practice in the field what you learn from this book at your desks.

Well, now for the requirements. We have got the dogs, we have got the ferrets, spade, bag, etc.; but for rabbiting we must have a much more costly stock-in-trade if we are to do a big business. We shall require an ordinary gardener's spade for digging in soft sandy ground, where the rabbit burrows sometimes go in for yards, and as much as ten feet deep down; also another spade, longer in the blade than our ratting one, the sides more turned in, and with a handle ten feet long, with a steel hook at the end instead of a spike. With this spade we can sink down many feet after the hole is too deep for the ordinary spade, and the turned in sides will hold the soft earth and allow you to bring it to the surface. If you dig down on the top of a rabbit – as you will do when you know your work – the hook at the end will enable you to draw first it and then the ferret up by the string. We must have a piece of strong light supple cord, marked by a piece of red cloth drawn through the strands at every yard, so that one can tell exactly how far in the ferret is; and it is as well to have a second shorter cord for work in stiff heavy ground, where the holes are never deep. Next, we must have two or three dozen purse-nets, which are circular, about two feet in diameter, with a string rove round the outside mesh fastened to a peg. These are for covering over bolt holes to bag a rabbit when driven out by the ferrets. The nets should be made of the very best string, so as to be as light and fine as possible. The mesh should be just large enough to allow a rabbit's head to pass through.

Like the postscript to a lady's letter, the chief item I have saved till the last, and I fear it will be some time before the ordinary rabbit-catcher will be able to afford it. I refer to long nets, which are used for running round or across a piece of covert to catch the rabbits as they are bustled about by the dogs. A rabbit-catcher in full swing should have from eight hundred to a thousand yards of this, for with a good long net he will often kill as many rabbits in a few hours as he could do with the ferrets in a week.

I myself keep no special dog for rabbit-catching, chiefly because I have a neighbour who will always let me have a cunning old lurcher that he keeps, which is as good as gold, and as clever as a lawyer, and desperately fond of a day with me and my dogs.

I have three male ferrets, real monsters, strong enough to trot down a burrow and drag five or six yards of line after them with ease.

Having described all the tools, etc., necessary for work, I will now jot down, as an exercise for you students, a nice easy day's rabbiting that actually took place a few weeks ago – a sort of day that quite a young beginner might work with success. There had been a sharp rime frost in the night, which still hung about in shady spots at eight o'clock in the morning, as Jack and I marched off with my dogs and ferrets, accompanied by old Fly, the lurcher. By nine a.m. we began working field hedge-rows and banks, where rabbits were pretty plentiful and had been established for years in every description of burrow. There had been a lot of partridge and other shooting going on over this farm for the last month, and most of the rabbits had got a dislike to sitting out in the open, and were under ground, so we began at the burrows at once, the dogs driving every rabbit that was sitting out in the hedge back to their burrows as we walked along. We began work in a stiff clay bank far too hard for the rabbits to make deep holes in, and here we got on fast. I took the ditch side – in fact, I took the ditch itself – with a big ferret with a short line on, and I ran it into each hole I came to. Jack on the other side looked out for the bolt holes, and always laid down a little to one side, as much as possible out of sight, but with a hand just on the bank over the hole ready to catch a bolting rabbit. Fly and the other dogs took charge of the other holes, and all kept as quiet as possible. In went the ferret, slowly dragging the line after him till I count two yards gone by the red marks on the line; then there is a halt for half a minute, then a loud rumbling and the line is pulled fast through my fingers. Jack moves quickly, and the next instant a rabbit is thrown a little way out into the field with its neck broken. Jack says, "Ferret out," then picks it up, draws the line through the hole, passes the ferret over to me, and we go on to the next, having filled up the entrance of the hole we have just worked. Hole after hole was ferreted much in the same way. Sometimes Jack bagged the bolting rabbit, sometimes the dogs, and now and then one bolted and got into the hedge before it could be caught and went back, but it was little use, for the dogs with Fly at their head were soon after it, and in a few minutes Fly was sure to have it, and would retrieve it back to Jack.

As we worked round a big field, we got into softer ground, a red sand and soil mixed; and here the holes were much deeper and often ran through the bank and out for yards under ground into the next field. Here Jack and I changed places, Jack doing the ferreting, and I going to his side with the garden spade. One, two, three, four, five yards the ferret went and stopped, and all was quiet. I listen, but not a sound. Jack pulls gently on the line and finds it tight, and for a minute we wait, hoping a rabbit may bolt from the hole the ferret went in at. But no such luck. I take the small ratting-spade, and with the spike end feel into the ground at the foot of the bank, and at once come upon the hole; this I open out and clear of earth, and Jack, who has crept through the hedge, kneels down and finds the line passing this hole in the direction of the field and going downwards. At that moment there is a sound like very distant thunder, and the line is pulled quickly four yards further into the hole, and the marks show six yards are in. I go about this distance out into the field, lie down and place my ear close to the ground. I shift about in all directions listening intently, and at last hear a faint thudding sound. I shift again a few inches in this direction, and lose it; in that, and recover it; again a few inches, and the sound is directly under my head, but pretty deep down. I take the big spade and open out a hole a yard square, and dig down as far as I can reach. I get into the hole and sink deeper. I have to enlarge it a foot all round to get room, and then I dig down again till only my head appears above ground when I stand up. Then I take the long spade, and with that sink two more feet, and plump I come on the top of the hole, and the ferret shoves a sand-covered head up and looks at me. I reverse the long spade and catch the line with the hook and pull the ferret up, and then calling Jack, I send him head first into the well-like pit, holding on to one of his feet myself as I lie flat on the ground to allow him to go deep enough. In a minute a dead rabbit is taken out and two live ones, whose necks Jack breaks as he hangs suspended, and then I pull him up with his plunder, and he rights himself on the surface, very red in the face, very sandy, spluttering and rubbing his eyes. Then the ferret is swung down again by the line, it goes a little way into the hole and returns, and so we know we have made a clean sweep. The big hole is filled up and stamped down, and after filling a pipe and resting a few minutes, on we go with our work.

On the high sandy part of the field we have several deep digs like the above, with varying success, and we rejoice when we reach the last side of the field and get into clay again, where holes are short and most of the rabbits bolt at once. During all the day we only stopped once for half-an-hour to get a snack of bread and cheese, and by the time the cock partridges began to call their families together for roost, and the teams in the next field to knock off ploughing, we are all, man, boy, dogs and ferrets, fairly tired, and are glad to tumble seventeen couple of rabbits into the keeper's cart that has been sent out for them, and trudge off home ourselves.

Now for another day's sport that was quite different. No dogs with us, only a bag of ready-muzzled ferrets, a bundle of purse nets and a spade. Success will depend on perfect quiet, and even the patter of the dogs' feet would spoil our sport, so they are at home for once, and Jack and I are alone. It is one of those soft mild dull days that now and then appear in mid-winter, a sort of day to gladden the heart of foxhunters and doctors, and to make wiseacres shake their heads and say "most unseasonable." It is a good day for Jack and me, and we feel confident as we steal into a plantation of tall spruce firs, placed so thick on the ground that beneath them is perpetual twilight, and not a blade of grass or bramble to hide the thick carpet of needle points. Softly we creep forward to a lot of burrows we know of in the corner of the wood, and then I go forward alone and spread a net loosely over every hole, firmly pegging it down by the cord. This done I stand quietly down-wind of the holes, and Jack comes and slips the six ferrets all into different holes, and then crouches down on his knees. All is quiet; only the whisperings of the tree-tops, the occasional chirp of a bird, or the rustle of a mouse in the dead leaves. Five minutes pass, and then out dashes a rabbit into a net, which draws up round it. Jack moves forward on tip-toe, kills the rabbit and takes it out of the net, and covers the hole again. While he is doing this, three more rabbits have bolted and got netted, one has escaped, and a ferret has come out. The captured ones are killed, the ferret sent into another hole, and for an hour this work goes on, and during all the time neither of us have spoken, for we know there is nothing that scares wild animals more than the human voice, unless it is the jingle of metals, such as a bunch of keys rattling. They dread the human voice because they have had too much experience of it, and the rattle of metal because they have not had experience enough of it, for it is a sound they have never heard, and nothing like, in the quiet woods and fields. On the other hand, animals pay but little attention to a whistle, for in one shape or another they are constantly hearing it from their feathered companions.

But to go back to our netting. An hour over, we pick up the ferrets as they come out and bag them, and then I go off to some fresh holes and spread the nets again, and we repeat the same performance; and during the day we kill, without any digging or hard work, about twenty-two couple of rabbits. In the above account I have written of a day's sport that took place in a fir plantation in a little village in Norfolk, where it would have been madness to work the ferrets without muzzling them, for they would have been sure to kill some rabbits in the holes and then have laid up; but I should mention that I have killed many rabbits in the same way on the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire, and I was much astonished when I first got there to find men who thoroughly understood their business working their ferrets under nets without muzzling them. I adopted the plan myself, and have rarely had a ferret kill a rabbit underground. For some reason that I could never find out, a Cotswold rabbit will always bolt from a hole with a ferret in if it can. It is well known in Norfolk that if a rabbit is run into a hole by dogs, you may ferret it if you like, but it will never bolt, and it must be dug out. But in Gloucestershire I have seen the same rabbit bolt out of a hole, get shot at, be run by dogs, go to ground, and again bolt at once from a ferret. Few professionals ever use a line on a ferret on the Cotswold, one reason being that the burrows are nearly all in rocky ground, and there would be danger of the line being caught in the numerous cracks; besides it is not required, for a rabbit there is sure to bolt, and for this reason it is twice as easy to kill rabbits in Gloucestershire as it is in Norfolk, especially in the sandy or soft soil of the latter county.

Let me here beg of all my readers, especially students, never to keep a poor rabbit alive in their hands a second. I don't suppose any who read this book could be so unsportsmanlike and brutal as to keep a rabbit alive to course and torture over again with dogs, or for the fun of shooting at the poor little beast. Such ruffians should never be allowed a day's sport on a gentleman's property. They are only fit to go out mole-catching. No, directly you have a live rabbit in your hand, take it by its hind legs with your right hand, and the head with your left, with two fingers under its face; with these fingers turn the head back, and give the rabbit a smart quick stretch, and in an instant all its sufferings are over. Never hit it with your hand or a stick behind the ears: first, because you are not quite sure to kill it with the first blow; and secondly, if you do, half the blood in the rabbit will settle in a great bruise at the spot where it was struck, and make that portion unfit for table.