VIII 



DAMAGE BY MAMMALS TO PROPERTY OTHER THAN 

 THE HUMAN FOOD SUPPLY 



We have seen in a preceding chapter that mammals, in destroying 

 crops such as are used as food for the human race, also destroy a vast 

 amount of food suitable for domestic stock and for wild game animals. 

 This damage indirectly affects the human food supply by limiting the 

 food for animals that provide our meat, but part of the grain and 

 hay destroyed might otherwise have been fed to horses and mules, 

 whose flesh is not much used for food in America. Hence the destruc- 

 tion of that part of the crop does not affect our food supply except in 

 a very intangible way. However, to the farmer it matters not whether 

 the loss affects the supply of food for meat-producing animals or the 

 supply of food for draft animals. In either case his personal loss is a 

 real one, and if he has less grain and hay to sell he will have less money 

 to spend for clothing, shoes and other merchandise, as well as for the 

 education of his children, for pleasure and for other proper purposes. 

 So the damage to a farmer's crop affects many others and is a distinct 

 loss to business in general. It is obviously impossible to accurately esti- 

 mate the monetary value of the loss to a community from this source. 

 Rodents eat a great deal of vegetation that would otherwise serve as 

 food for game and fur-bearing animals, thus perhaps indirectly affect- 

 ing to some extent the interests of the hunter and the business of the 

 trapper and furrier. 



There is also an immense amount of damage done by various mam- 

 mals to crops, commodities and other kinds of property not usable as 

 food by human beings or by domestic or game animals. Thus the cotton 

 rat, in addition to damaging many other crops, also is destructive to 

 cotton. In a former chapter it has been stated that the damage done to 

 material in homes, stores, warehouses and factories, by the imported 

 house rats and mice, is very great. While much of this involves food- 

 stuffs, the injury to other articles of merchandise is exceedingly serious, 

 though in the estimates it is impossible to segregate the items of dam- 

 age to non-edibles from that to edibles. The whole discussion of the 

 destructiveness of rodents in the preceding chapter is also pertinent 



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