Rats 321 



and, let us hope, took vengeance on the impertinent thieves. 

 The keeper, it may be added, was a notorious and most 

 successful " vermin " killer ; and his apathy in neglecting to 

 keep down the Rats, at his very door, while no trouble was 

 considered too great that promised to lead to the destruction 

 of a Weasel, or a Sparrow Hawk's nest, may be taken as a 

 very fair example of a too common failing. 



In one place, where a dead sheep had been laid into the 

 fork of a tree (a very common practice in these parts), and 

 left there, it was completely skeletonised by Rats, which 

 had worn a regular path to and from it from the water side. 

 Seeing a Rat descend the tree one day, when I was fishing, 

 led me to examine the place ; when, on the sheep being 

 touched, two more Rats bolted from it, and made helter- 

 skelter for the river. The skin of the sheep was almost 

 entire, and was by this time pretty hard and dry ; but 

 through an entrance effected in one thigh (that part of the 

 animal which was first reached by a Rat ascending the tree), 

 almost the whole contents of the body had been extracted, 

 leaving practically nothing but " a bag of bones," and form- 

 ing a very snug, if somewhat unsavoury retreat. 



On the snow there were generally some traces of Otters 

 to be found, and from these an insight into some of the 

 doings of the animal can sometimes be learnt that are 

 difficult of attainment without them. Thus, during one 

 hard frost, when the lake and most of the rivers were 

 frozen over, a track on the Twrch showed that an Otter 

 must have lain up the previous day, somewhere about 

 an old saw-mill in the village, where, I am quite sure 

 that any of the inhabitants would have been very much 

 surprised to find him. The tracks in the early months of 

 the year (January to March) invariably showed that two 

 animals, easily recognised as male and female from the 

 difference in the size of the prints, had been hunting in 

 company, and retired to the same holt, though in autumn 

 that was not so often noticeable. With a keeper, one day, 

 I followed the tracks of two up the Little Dee, until we lost 

 them, owing to rain and fresh snow falling, right out on the 

 moor, where they were probably making for some well- 



21 



