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 
ue 
