Death in the Fowlyard

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 714, 20 March 1953, Page 16

Death in the Fowlyard

by

SUNDOWNER

FEBRUARY 16

Y last note about hornM blowing was not long in print when I saw Charlie Johnstone again. I called to apologise for mis-spelling his nameAnglicising a Viking-and though I did not realise it at the time, I had influenza when I called. Charlie realised it at once. He saw, not only that I was

sick, but that the case called for im-

mediate treatment, which he forthwith began. For a frequent abstainer it was drastic treatment, and as the day wore on I must have had hallucinations. But it is not an hallucination that I was introduced to Miss Wood on the telephone, and asked for, and received, a blast of the horn on the wire. That, I am certain, did happen, and I am still blushing after three weeks. Fortunately recent events, when we are old, soon fade from our memories, and I hope I shall have forgotten, if I ever meet Miss Wood at closer range, what home remedies did that day to a mind weakened already by influenza and

jatred with the shock of an unpardonable mis-spelling.

FEBRUARY 20

> Pe who suffered heavy losses of poultry last year until he trapped nine ferrets, has had worse trouble this year though he has already killed fourteen ferrets. How ‘many more he will have to kill before his cockerels are safe he does not now pretend to know, but if I had not seen the carcases, all caught near the

same ark, I would have laughed at

anyone who tried to tell me that ferrets live here in such numbers. The site of Jim’s slaughter is in fact closer to my home than to his, and although I lost two chickens early in the season, they disappeared by day, and that suggested cats or hawks. But Jim has had losses by day as well as by night, and has once or twice found ferret-killed cockerels hundreds of yards away from the sleeping ark. It is clear that his chickens have saved ours-and if I were as romantic as some of the people who write to me I would suggest

that they had given themselves voluntarily. But 23 ferrets is a disturbing number of predators in one poultry-yard in a year. It,means that the ferret population of most farm districts, must run into hundreds, the egg and bird losses into many thousands, and the compensatory deaths of rabbits into astonishing figures, too.

It is the opinion of most farmers, I think, that ferrets are lazy and inefficient as rabbit-killers, that they kill only to eat, and live for several days on one catch, When there is a real slaughter in a fowlyard, a dozen birds or more killed in one night, the killer is believed to be a weasel or a stoat, or, now and again, a family of half-grown ferrets still living and

hunting together.. But I don’t think:that-. view can be sustained. I have seen Jim's dead lying in ‘heaps,’ not i in thé ark itself or under the ark, but in a gorse-shaded ditch ‘a. few, yatds away to which. they have been dragged. It is not hunger but murder that piles them up like that in one night, and the. murderérs, as the traps show, have been full-grown ferrets.

FEBRUARY 24

9 Pe dee cae * IM was. incredulous when I told. him that the skins of his 23 ferrets would have brought him £50 if he had caughtthem a year or two earlier. That, however, was "information that? i would .not have given: him ‘m to werify. | But I ee e of a ferret when Iwas °a child* was’ or four"

pounds, and, that. anyone; the year’ I

‘was born, could claim a substantial bonus if he successfully introduced. stoats and weasels. I don’t know whether the bonus was ever paid, but stoats and weasels arrived when I was two, and most of the ferrets then in the country had cost the community three guineas each. This, I imagine, was a little more than was paid for my Own entry. Though ferrets are closer to minks than goats to sheep and rabbits to hares, we don’t seem to have tried in New Zealand to exploit the relationship commercially. We go on, too, in our innocence calling stoats stoats and not ermine, There are however mink farms in England, and I have seen it stated in an English newspaper that a live mink is worth about £25. Dried skins I have seen quoted at six to seven pounds, and it would’ seem therefore on paper that q@ man with £100 and no nose might add = ene een nena

something to his income without taking big financial risks.. But I have also seen it stated in a standard work on natural history. that minks emit a more offensive odour than, ferrets, weasels, and stoats cottibinad) and, ‘are’ surpassed only by skunks "in their’ power to disgust and nauseate, That, LS imagizie,. is the answer "ag aiicatey Sgemen™

FEBRUARY 28

er a rom sel of anilunsiaien to sit for seven hours on bare boards with two, and usually three or four, leather‘bound feet. prodding one at ‘intervals from the middle of the back down, So far I have been equal to this, though 2 i foresee the ‘day when a Cricket match will impose too big a strain on, my

nerves and years. But cricket is a

vee * soothing game, and a cricket the most placid out of church... Even at international. matches the exciting moments come infrequently and soon pass; and the rest is passive contemplation in the sun. The sun however does not always shine; the wind sometimes blows; the dust and waste paper sometimes rise; and it is in moments like these that spectators ask themselves where the "gate" goes. They know that big gates balance little gates, and pay for days with no gates at all. But they know, ’too, and sometimes remember, that business follows the satisfied customer. It never yet came riding on the wind ahead of dissatisfied customers, or patrons patient enough to hope, and go on hoping, that they will get better service when their suppliers have ‘mastered the art of hoisting themselves by theit own shoestrings. (To be continued)