The keeper does not always take his ferrets with him when he goes
ratting. Usually they are too large to enter rat-holes freely, and even
the small rat-ferret has difficulty in turning round. And when a ferret
has once entered a hole a rat cannot pass him, and so may be prevented
from bolting and showing sport. The sport takes place underground,
unless the ferret retreats while there is time. The fight ends either
in severe punishment for the ferret or in the death of the rat; when
the ferret proceeds to gorge himself on his victim--and to lie up.
Again, it is more difficult to find a lingering ferret in a rat's hole
than in a rabbit's burrow; a line-ferret sent in to explore cannot move
about in the small rat passages as in the roomy tunnels of rabbits, and
so cannot locate the free ferret. To dig for a ferret in a rat's run is
always risky; the diameter is so small that the spade may cut through
without any warning, and also cut through the ferret. When the spade
breaks through the crown of a rabbit's hole, on the floor of which is
the ferret, the man with the spade naturally eases his pressure. But
the ferret fills the rat-hole to the roof.
There is still another danger in ratting with ferrets; the dogs, unless
very well trained, may bring about a tragedy. Even when a dog is
ferret-proof the ferret may plunge teeth into the dog, who naturally
retaliates. On all these accounts the keeper may prefer to go ratting
with an iron bar in place of a ferret.
By using an iron bar instead of ferrets for bolting rats, all kinds of
difficulties and delays are prevented; and the keeper is free to go
home at any time without having to wait for loitering allies. To strike
an iron bar into a rat's hole is to strike terror into the rat's heart.
One might probe a rabbit's burrow with a bar for a month, and no rabbit
would bolt--indeed, the more one probed the tighter would the rabbit
sit. In rabbiting, a bar is used only to find holes and save digging.
But thrust a bar anywhere near a rat's subterranean lair, and probably
the rat will bolt, as if possessed, at the first time of asking. Such
an effect does probing have on rats that they will fly before the
crowbar well knowing that enemies await their appearance. Even with a
dog at the hole who has grabbed at the rat more than once, the rat will
fly before a shrewd thrust. The art of thrusting is to drive the bar
into the hole behind the rat, not blocking the way by which it will
bolt.
Rats seem to have a deep-rooted terror of anything that probes and
prods. Perhaps some of them when their holes are disturbed associate
the trouble with pitchforks. For hundreds of years rats have lived in
corn-ricks, and at threshing time when the sheaves have been lifted by
pitchforks have bolted furiously. The first thrust of the pitchfork
into a protecting sheaf puts out the rats, though well aware of the
presence of men and dogs. When the iron bar comes crashing into the
burrow, perhaps the rats half expect the soil to be uplifted as if it
were a sheaf of corn.