38 REVELATIONS OF A BAT-CATCHEB. 



and almost as quick as I tell it, the Rat has- 

 snatched a live chicken and run with it under 

 a pigsty floor. 



I have known them to take half-grown young 

 ducks from the w r ater side. I remember once 

 ferreting round a pit, near a barn, and when I 

 put my ferret in the hole, it pulled out two 

 dead chickens and three middle-sized dead 

 ducks, and behind them, not more than a yard 

 deep in the pit bank, was an old Eat. I have 

 also known them to get into the coops where 

 a gamekeeper was rearing his pheasants, and 

 to kill nine young ones in a single night all 

 from under the same hen. 



Eats are also fond of eggs. I have read of 

 many ways in which Eats take eggs, but in my 

 quarter-of-a-century's experience of Batting 

 I never saw Eats take eggs save in one 

 way, and that is, dragging or rolling them 

 along the floor with their front paws, until 

 they get them to the mouth of the hole. I 

 remember one place where I was ferreting. 

 There was an old cellar, the door of which at 

 the top of the steps had to my knowledge been 

 nailed up two or three years. Out of the hen 

 house the Eats had eaten a hole at each side 

 of the cellar door at the bottom. One day we 

 burst open the door, went into the cellar (where 

 it was impossible for a hen to get whilst the 



