FERRETS FOR THE FRONT

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 60, 4 December 1917, Page 5

FERRETS FOR THE FRONT

FOR WAR ON THE SOMME RATS. The little consequences of the wai ' ; are numberless and often inexplicable. It is now agitating the ferrets. Bri- ; tain, before tli© wur ; bred ferrets for the world, and then the world forgot ■ it* wanted tliem. Now they are being 1 rapidly mobilised, At the London Docks one day recently hundreds 01 these lithe, active, and vicious creatures were being packed by men wearing stout leather gauntlets. They were going to France. Many of tliem were destined for the Bomme, and to a village there no longer on the map. Anyone who knows the old battle- j ground of the Sommo will guess the reason for tho ferrets. They are to fight the rats. The west side of that area, a "Daily News" representative ,/ was informed, swarms with rats_ ("as big as babbits"), which flourish in the endless galleries in the chalk hills left by the Germans, such as at St. Pierr6 Divion and Moquet Farm. They hav6 become so impudent that the big ones ' will dispute a narrow alley when ap- ! proaclied. A systematic attempt io being made to reduce them. Another curious result of the war is that numbers of parrots have been. , made homeless. Their owners have . been called up and have been forced to send them to the wild beast dealer as the only known address. The grey African parrot in bulk was nothing new before the war. when steamers came in from the Gulf of Guinea. But it i;> entirely strange to find a large con--1 gress of acclimatised birds conversing with a combined vocabulary that woulu make the interruptions at a peac6 meeting sound like a dead silence. yA rant -oa