THE HONEY RATEL 



it, and killing it laid its body aside and again began 

 the same tactics of frightening them. One by one 

 as they emerged she slew them, until the nine were 

 dead. There is no doubt whatever that the ratel 

 actually did employ the method stated of intimi- 

 dating the rats with the one fixed object of getting 

 them to crawl through the hole she had made, for 

 the glass, the woodwork, and the floor bore ample 

 evidence of her having hammered, bit, poked, and 

 battered the case on the side opposite to the hole 

 she had made. 



After eating one of the fattest of the albino rats, 

 and her appetite being appeased, she began scouting 

 round to find a safe retreat. Eventually she found 

 in another hall of the museum a hole communi- 

 cating with a dark hollow recess under two flat- 

 topped cases which had been placed back to back, 

 the sides of which were boxed in with wood. Ex- 

 ploring the dark interior she found it to be an ideal 

 lair, so she forthwith trotted back to the scene of 

 her destructive energy and carried the rats a dis- 

 tance of a hundred yards, one or two at a time, and 

 deposited them in her lair. 



Here the caretaker found her with eight dead rats 

 by her side. When the cases were removed and she 

 realised that concealment was no longer possible, 

 she scooped the rats into a heap with a sweep of her 

 fore paw, and, lying flat upon them, defied him to 

 take them from her. Finding he was able with a 

 long stick to poke some of them from under her 



^57 



