GASSING BUNNY.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 February 1920, Page 14

GASSING BUNNY.

NEW BROCESS IN THE WEST. The heavy labor costs involved in the digging out of rabbits in the west, where tliey are now breeding up again in large numbers, have resulted in adapting the motor car to a novel purpose. The car is being made to undertake a kind of gas attaek and to carry the assault right into the enemy's own camp. The campaign is proving itself both cheap and effective, and the experiments that have been carried out in the Bathurst district give promise of branding the motor car as the best rabbitexterminator discovered to date. The digging out of burrows is now admitted to be the only effective alternative to thorough fumigation, but the hardness of the ground during the drought has made the -work impracticable, even if labor at other th.in prohibitive rates had been available. The landholder has thus had to undertake the job, and, aided only by his runabout and a length of hose-pipe. The engine of the car is set running after the motor has been backed towards the scene of attack, and one end of the hose is attached to the exhaust pipe, while the other is inserted in one of the inlets of the warren, all the other entrances being closed up. The poison gas that forces its way into bunny's retreat does the rest. After five minutes or so tl\e hose is taken out, and the car moves along to add to its deadly work. Burrows that have been dug out after s\ich fumigation have revealed the thorough deadliness of the process. In nearly every case the rabbits, numbering from a couple of dozen to 50, have been found dead near the entrances that had been blocked, and none have been found alive elsewhere in the warren. Even those who have managed to get out during the attack have died later.

Reckoning the cost of petrol and oil, the depreciation of the motor, and interest on capital, it has been found that the car-fumigatina l involves about only five per cent, of the expense of digging out.