WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS 



seem to produce their young not underground, but in a 

 comfortable, well-built nest, formed in the shape of a ball, 

 with a small entrance on one side. As it is built of the same 

 material as the surrounding herbage, and the entrance is 

 closed up, it is not easily seen. 



Everybody must be glad to encourage any animal that 

 kills a rat, and the owls are the most determined enemies 

 to this, the most disgusting and obnoxious animal which we 

 have in this country. For what can be so sickening as to 

 know that these animals come direct from devouring and 

 revelling in the foulest garbage in the drains of your house, 

 to the larder where your own provisions are kept; and, 

 fresh from their stinking and filthy banquet, run over your 

 meat with their clammy paws, and gnaw at your bread 

 with their foul teeth? what cleansing and washing can wipe 

 away their traces? Nothing will keep out these animals 

 when they have once established themselves in a house. 

 They gnaw through stone, lead or almost anything. They 

 may be extirpated for a time, but you suddenly find your- 

 self invaded by a fresh army. Some old rats, too, acquire 

 such a carnivorous appetite, that fowls and ducks, old or 

 young, pigeons, rabbits, — all fall a prey to them. Adepts 

 in climbing as well as in undermining, they get at every- 

 thing, dead or alive. They reach game, although hung 

 most carefully in a larder, by climbing the wall, and cling- 

 ing to beam or rope till they get at it; they then devour 

 and destroy all that can be reached. I have frequently 

 known them in this manner destroy a larder full of game 

 in a single night. They seem to commence with the hind 

 legs of the hares, and to eat downwards, hollowing the 



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