Part 4 (1/2)
If a spaniel, for instance, one of those allowed to lie loose about farmhouses, takes to hunting for herself, she is almost always found to meet a canine friend at a little distance from the homestead. It is said that spaniels when they go off like this never bark when on the heels of a rabbit, as they would do if a sportsman was with them and the chase legitimate. This suppression of what must be an almost uncontrollable inclination shows no little intelligence. If they gave tongue, they would be certainly detected, and as certainly thrashed. To watch the sneaking way in which a spaniel will come home after an unlawful expedition of this kind is most amusing. She makes her appearance on the road or footpath so as not to look as if coming from the hedges, and enters at the back; or if any movement be going on, as the driving of cattle, she will join in it, displaying extraordinary zeal in a.s.sisting: anything to throw off suspicion.
Of all sport, if a man desires to widen his chest, and gain some idea of the chase as it was in ancient days, let him take two good greyhounds and ”uncouple at the timorous flying hare,” following himself on foot.
A race like this over the elastic turf of the downs, inhaling with expanded lungs air which acts on the blood as strong drink on the brain, stimulating the pulse, and strengthening every fibre of the frame, is equal to another year of life. Coursing for the coursing's sake is capital sport. A hare when sorely tried with the hot breath from the hounds' nostrils on his flanks, will sometimes puzzle them by das.h.i.+ng round and round a rick. Then in sweeping circles the trio strain their limbs, but the hare, having at the corners the inner side and less ground to cover, easily keeps just ahead. This game lasts several minutes, till presently one of the hounds is sharp enough to dodge back and meet the hare the opposite way. Even then his quick eye and ready turn often give him another short breathing s.p.a.ce by rus.h.i.+ng away at a tangent.
Rabbits, although of ”low degree” in comparison with the pheasant, really form an important item in the list of the keeper's charges.
Shooting generally commences with picking out the young rabbits about the middle or towards the end of the hay harvest, according as the season is early or late. Some are shot by the farmers, who have the right to use a gun, earlier than this, while they still disport in the mowing gra.s.s. It requires experience and skill to select the young rabbit just fit for table from the old bucks, the does which may yet bring forth another litter, and those little bunnies that do not exceed the size of rats.
The gra.s.s conceals the body of the animal, and nothing is visible beyond the tips of the ears; and at thirty yards distance one pair of ears is very like another pair. The developed ear is, however, less pointed than the other; and in the rabbit of a proper size they are or seem to be wider apart. The eye is also guided by the gra.s.s itself and the elevation of the rabbit's head above it when lifted in alarm at a chance sound: if the animal is full grown of course the head stands higher. In motion the difference is at once seen; the larger animal's back and flanks show boldly, while the lesser seems to slip through the gra.s.s.
By these signs, and by a kind of instinct which grows upon one when always in the field, it is possible to distinguish between them even in tall gra.s.s and in the gloaming.
This sort of shooting, if it does not afford the excitement of the pheasant battue, or require the alertness necessary in partridge killing, is not without its special pleasures. These are chiefly to be attributed to the genial warmth of the weather at that season, when the reapers have only just begun to put the tall corn to the edge of their crooked swords, and one can linger by the hedge-side without dread of wintry chills.
The aftermath in which the rabbits feed is not so tall as the mowing gra.s.s, and more easy and pleasant to walk through, though it is almost devoid of flowers. Neither does it give so much shelter; and you must walk close to the hedge, gliding gently from bush to bush, the slower the better. Rabbits feed several times during the day--i.e. in the very early morning, next about eleven o'clock, again at three or four, and again at six or seven. Not that every rabbit comes out to nibble at those hours, but about that time some will be seen moving outside the buries.
As you stroll beside the hedge, brus.h.i.+ng the boughs, a rabbit feeding two hundred yards away will lift his head inquiringly from the gra.s.s.
Then stop, and remain still as the elm tree hard by. In a minute or two, rea.s.sured, the ears perked up so sharply fall back, and he feeds again. Another advance of ten or twenty yards, and up go the ears--you are still till they drop once more. The rabbit presently turns his back towards you, sniffing about for the tenderest blades; this is an opportunity, and an advance of forty or fifty paces perhaps is accomplished. Now, if you have a rook-rifle you are near enough; if a smooth-bore, the same system of stalking must be carried farther yet.
If you are patient enough to wait when he takes alarm, and only to advance when he feeds, you are pretty sure to ”bag” him.
Sometimes, when thus gliding with stealthy tread, another rabbit will suddenly appear out of the ditch within easy reach; it is so quiet he never suspected the presence of an enemy. If you pause and keep quite still, which is the secret of all stalking, he will soon begin to feed, and the moment he turns his back towards you up goes the gun; not before, because if he sees your arm move he will be off to the ditch.
True, a snap-shot might be made as he runs, which at first sight would appear more sportsmanlike than ”potting;” but it is not so, for it is ten chances to one that you do not kill him dead on the spot in the short distance he has to traverse. Perhaps the hind legs will be broken; well, then he will drag them along behind him, using the fore paws with astonis.h.i.+ng rapidity and power. Before the second barrel can be emptied he will gain the shelter of the fern that grows on the edge of the bank and dive into a burrow, there to die in misery. So that it is much better to steadily ”pot” him. Besides which, if a rabbit dies in a burrow all the other animals in that particular burrow desert it till nature's scavengers have done their work. A dog cannot well be taken while stalking--not that dogs will not follow quietly, but because a rabbit, catching sight of a dog, is generally stricken with panic even if a hundred yards away, and bolts immediately.
I have seen a rabbit whose back was broken by shot drag itself ten yards to the ditch. If the forelegs are broken, then he is helpless: all the kicks of the hind legs only tumble him over and over without giving him much progress. The effects of shot are very strange, and sometimes almost inexplicable: as when a hare which has received a pellet through the edge of the heart runs a quarter of a mile before dropping. It is noticed that hares and rabbits, hit in the vital organs about the heart, often run a considerable distance, and then, suddenly in the midst of their career, roll head over heels dead. Both hares and rabbits are occasionally killed with marks of old shot wounds, but not very often, and they are but of a slight character--the pellets are found just under the skin, with a kind of lump round them. Shot holes through the ears are frequently seen, of course doing no serious harm.
Now and then a rabbit hit in the head will run round and round in circles, making not the slightest attempt to escape. The first time I saw this, not understanding it, I gave the creature the second barrel; but next time I let the rabbit do as he would. He circled round and round, going at a rapid pace. I stood in his way, and he pa.s.sed between my legs. After half a dozen circles the pace grew slower. Finally, he stopped, sat up quite still for a minute or so, and then drooped and died. The pellet had struck some portion of the brain.
I once, while looking for snipe with charges of small shot in the barrels, roused a fine hare, and fired without apparent effect. But after crossing about half of the field with a spaniel tearing behind, he began to slacken speed, and I immediately followed. The hare dodged the spaniel admirably, and it was with the utmost difficulty I secured him (refraining from firing the second barrel on purpose). He had been stopped by one single little pellet in the great sinew of the hind leg, which had partly cut it through. Had it been a rabbit he would certainly have escaped into a bury, and there, perhaps died, as shot wounds frequently fester: so that in stalking rabbits, or waiting for them behind a tree or bush, it is much better to take a steady aim at the head, and so avoid torturing the creature.
”Potting” is hardly sport, yet it has an advantage to those who take a pleasure in observing the ways of bird and animal. There is just sufficient interest to induce one to remain quiet and still, which is the prime condition of seeing anything; and in my own case the rabbits so patiently stalked have at last often gone free, either from their own amusing antics, or because the noise of the explosion would disturb something else under observation. In winter it is too cold; then you step quietly and yet briskly up to a fence or a gateway, and glance over, and shoot at once; or with the spaniels hunt the bunnies from the fern upon the banks, yourself one side of the hedge and the keeper the other.
In excavating his dwelling, the rabbit, thoughtless of science, constructs what may be called a natural auditorium singularly adapted for gathering the expiring vibrations of distant sound. His round tunnel bored in a sandy bank is largest at the opening, like the mouth of a trumpet, and contracts within--a form which focusses the undulations of the air. To obtain the full effect the ear should listen some short way within; but the sound, as it is thrown backwards after entering, is often sufficiently marked to be perceptible when you listen outside. The great deep ditches are dry in summer; and though shooting be not the object, yet a gun for knocking over casual vermin is a pleasant excuse for idling in a reclining position shoulder-high in fern, hidden like a skirmisher in such an entrenchment. A mighty root bulging from the slope of the bank forms a natural seat. There is a cus.h.i.+on of dark green moss to lean against, and the sand worked out from the burrows--one nearly on a level with the head and another lower down--has here filled up the ditch to some height, making a footstool.
In the ditch lie numbers of last year's oak leaves, which so st.u.r.dily resist decay. All the winter and spring they were soaked by the water from the ”land-springs”--as those which only run in wet weather are called--draining into it, and to that water they communicated a peculiar flavour, slightly astringent. Even moderate-sized streamlets become tainted in the latter part of the autumn by the ma.s.s of leaves they carry down, or filter through, in woodland districts. Often the cottagers draw their water from a small pool filled by such a ditch, and coated at the bottom with a thick layer of decomposing leaves. The taste of this water is strong enough to overcome the flavour of their weak tea, yet they would rather use such water than walk fifty yards to a brook. It must, however, be admitted that the brooks at that time are also tinctured with leaf, and there seems to be no harm in it.
Out from among these dead leaves in the ditch protrudes a crooked branch fallen long since from the oak, and covered with grey lichen. On the right hand a tangled thicket of bramble with its uneven-shaped stems closes the spot in, and on the left a stole of hazel rises with the parasitical ”hardy fern” fringing it near the earth. The outer bark of the hazel is very thin; it is of a dark mottled hue; bruise it roughly, and the inner bark shows a bright green. The lowly ivy creeps over the bank--its leaves with five angles, and variegated with grey streaks.
Through the hawthorn bushes above comes a faint but regular sound--it is the parting fibres of the gra.s.s-blades in the meadow on the other side as the cows tear them apart, steadily eating their way onwards. The odour of their breath floats heavy on the air. The sun is sinking, and there is a hush and silence.
But the rabbit-burrow here at my elbow is not silent; it seems to catch and heighten faint noises from a distance. A man is walking slowly home from his work up the lane yonder; the fall of his footsteps is distinctly rendered by the hole here. The dull thuds of a far-off mallet or ”bitel” (beetle) driving in a stake are plainly audible. The thump-thump of a horse's hoofs cantering on the sward by the roadside, though deadened by the turf, are reproduced or sharpened. Most distinct of all comes the regular sound of oars against the tholepins or rowlocks of a boat moving on the lake many fields away. So that in all probability to the rabbit his hole must be a perfect ”Ear of Dionysius,”
magnifying a whisper--unless, indeed, its turns and windings confuse the undulations of sound. It is observable that before the rabbit ventures forth he stays and listens just within the entrance of his burrow, where he cannot _see_ any danger unless absolutely straight before him--a habit that may have unconsciously grown up from the apparent resonance of sound there.
Sitting thus silently on the root of the oak, presently I hear a slight rustling among the dead leaves at the bottom of the ditch. They heave up as if something was pus.h.i.+ng underneath; and after a while, as he comes to the heap of sand thrown out by the rabbits, a mole emerges, and instantly with a s.h.i.+ver, as it were, of his skin throws off the particles of dust upon his fur as a dog fresh from the water sends a shower from his coat. The summer weather having dried the clay under the meadow turf and made it difficult to work, he has descended into the ditch, beneath which there is still a certain moistness, and where he can easily bore a tunnel.
It is rather rare to see a mole above ground; fortunately for him he is of diminutive size, or so glossy a fur would prove his ruin. As it is, every other old pollard willow tree along the hedge is hung with miserable moles, caught in traps, and after death suspended--like criminals swinging on a gibbet--from the end of slender willow boughs.
Moles seem to breed in the woods: first perhaps because they are less disturbed there, next because under the trees the earth is usually softer, retains its moisture longer, and is easier to work. From the woods their tracks branch out, ramifying like the roads which lead from a city. They have in addition main arteries of traffic, king's highways, along which they will journey one after the other; so that the mole-catcher, if he can discover such a road, slaughters many in succession. The heaps they throw up are awkward in mowing gra.s.s, the scythe striking against them; and in consequence of complaints of their rapid multiplication in the woods the keeper has to employ men to reduce their numbers. It is curious to note how speedily the mole buries himself in the soil; it is as if he suddenly dived into the earth.
Another slight rustling--a pause, and it is repeated; this time on the bank, among the dry gra.s.s. It is mice; they have a nervous habit of progressing in sharp, short stages. They rush forward seven or eight inches with lightning-like celerity--a dun streak seems to pa.s.s before your eye; then they stop short a moment or two, and again make another dash. This renders it difficult to observe them, especially as a single dead brown leaf is sufficient to hide one. It is so silent that they grow bold, and play their antics freely, darting to and fro, round and under the stoles, chasing each other. Sometimes they climb the bushes, running along the upper surface of the boughs that chance to be nearly horizontal. Once on a hawthorn branch in a hedge I saw a mouse descending with an acorn; he was, perhaps, five feet from the ground, and how and from whence he had got his burden was rather puzzling at first. Probably the acorn, dropping from the tree, had been caught and held in the interlacing of the bush till observed by the keen, if tiny, eyes below.
Mice have a magical way of getting into strange places. In some farmhouses they still use the ancient, old-fas.h.i.+oned lanterns made of tin--huge machines intended for a tallow candle, and with plates of thin translucent horn instead of gla.s.s. They are not wholly despicable; since if set on the ground and kicked over by a recalcitrant cow in the sheds, the horn does not break as gla.s.s would. These lanterns, having a handle at the top, are by it hung up to the beam in the kitchen; and sometimes to the astonishment of the servants in the quiet of the evening, they are found to be animated by some motive power, swinging to and fro and partly turning round. A mouse has got in--for the grease; but how? that is the ”wonderment,” as the rustic philosophers express it; for, being hung from the beam, eight or nine feet from the stone-flagged floor, there seems no way of approach for the mouse except by ”walking” on the ceiling or along and partly underneath the beam itself. If so, it would seem to be mainly by the propulsive power exerted previous to starting on the trip--just as a man can get a little way up the perpendicular side of a rick by running at it. Occasionally, no doubt, the mouse has entered when the lantern has been left opened while lighted on the ground, and so got shut in; but mice have been found in lanterns cobwebbed from long disuse.