OUR PERFECT PEST

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21332, 5 November 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

OUR PERFECT PEST

BY ANON

A GOOD TURN

It was, of course, outrageous of Barbara. " You can't possibly keep that thing," I said when she first came home with it in her coat-pocket. " Besides, it's illegal, anyway." " Not to keep them—only to let them go," said my wife calmly, as she casually deposited the tiny rabbit upon my pillow. Besides, who could help it ? I met little Hori and he was crying like anything and hugging this ridiculous creature under his coat. 'He is so small. I find him. But if I take him home, Rangi will kill him.' What else could I possibly do?" I began to tell her, in impassioned yet logical prose; but she merely interrupted me to say delightedly, " Do look at the way he's sitting up and cleaning his whiskers. I shall call him George." After that I realised that there was nothing to do but accept George as a member of the family. The worst of it is that rabbits are practically the only pest with which we are not afflicted. They do not thrive or multiply in our high country, and we have so far contented ourselves with fern, wineberry, ragwort, plantain and gorse. However, Barbara is not one to do things by halves. During the ensuing six weeks George became practically an obsession. He needed such an incredible amount of attention. Theoretically he led a precarious existence in a hen-coop on the lawn with the family cats, an adoring and optimistic circle, sitting upon the roof. As a matter of fact he spent most of his nights in a small box in the corner of my bedroom—" because it's so lonely out there and cats' eyes are so terrifying at night." This I could have borne, even to the lament of the defrauded cats from the window-sill. But George had an extraordinary faculty for escape. Ho could have made his fortune as a music-hall turn, bound, handcuffed and trebly padlocked. I found it a little hard to grow accustomed to the soft thud with which he landed on my chest in the night watches and to the quick patter of tiny feet as he scuttled across my protesting form to bury himself in the warm darkness at the foot of the bed. A Visitor Into this intimate domesticity fell a bolt from the blue. Harrison, our mortgagee, lias been periodically restive during the slump. Now he suddenly decided to visit the farm and have a look at his vanishing security. Not that we objected to that; there was plenty to show him, from the front view of healthy fern to the back vista of encroaching wineberrv. The trouble was that Harrison had such an exalted idea of the country. Having no knowledge at all of farming, he was inclined to consider the place a gold-mine and to suspect me of feloniously withholding from him his share in my vast profits. Well, we would do our best. I went out to the back and mustered in all the oldest and lamest sheep, the thinnest cows and most spectral steers, and Barbara hid her great-grandmother's silver. Then we sallied forth to meet the service-car with old Darkie harnessed to the gig that Mollie had used on her honeymoon. In spite of all our efforts, Harrison was disgustingly pleased with everything. " Good sheep country," he said complacently as he peered short-sightedly at the gaunt old ewes. "No pests. No foxglove, no blackberry, no rabbits. They're simply overrun with them on the flats." I fancied that Barbara gave a guilty start and I noticed that when' we arrived homo she made a frantic effort to reach the spare bedroom first. Harrison was before her, however, and we could hear him fussily depositing his innumerable packages. Barbara listened nervously. "If only lie doesn't open it," she muttered. Explanations _ " What have you been up to this time ?" I began—but there was no need to ask further. At that very moment there was a crash, a bang, the hurried flinging open of the spare-room door—and George lolloped hastily past us, his eyes starting fearfully, his whiskers quivering with indignation. I leapt to intercept him, but he eluded me and made rapidly for those great open spaces for which his little rabbit heart had been yearning. I can only say that I made a perfectly honest attempt to explain it to Harrison. He simply didn't understand me. I suppose it would prove difficult to convince anyone who did not know Barbara that, Hurrying to find a haven for George during our absence and conscious that she was already late, she should succumb immediately to the temptation of an open and empty drawer in the spare room. " It seemed so safe—and now we've lost him," she wailed. Incredible though it may seem, in that moment of crisis, with a nervous and badly-jarred mortgagee upon our hands, that wretched woman was lamenting her lost pest! For myself, I found it hard to soothe Harrison. " I have always had an innate dislike of furry animals," he chattered. "So amazing; it leapt almost in my face as I was proceeding to dispose of my spare shirts. And to think that I congratulated myself on the farm's being free of them! Why, they must have positively infested the place." I gazed at him helplessly. Then it suddenly dawned on me that the man actually believed us to be afflicted with rabbits as were the Egyptians of old with various plagues! They had even stormed the house. Words failed me. But not Barbara. " Yes, it's terrible," she sighed. " Sometimes I feel I cannot bear it and that we must just leave the farm to them!" Infested J For the first time I coud see that Harrison's optimism was badly shaken. It tottered and fell to pieces during the ensuing week. In those few days George was able to accomplish what two years of acute slump had failed to do. Of course, he practically surrounded us. Rejoicing in his ill-gotten liberty, he infested the premises, sat impudently upon the lawn, frolicked among the cabbages, preened himself in the very back-yard. His life was miraculously preserved, largely because Barbara insisted on keeping the dogs on the chain and the cats in the wool-shed. " We must look after him. See how hard he's working for us," she pleaded. Certainly lie had sapped Harrison's morale. Impossible for his near vision to realise that our horde of rabbits was but one omnipresent George. " Thev actually seem to sit up and sneer at me," ho groaned. " Haven't you a gun ? 1 could easily shoot a dozen a day." Barbara lied appropriately. " And we're out of poiscn. It's so dreadfully expensive and I'm afraid we're losing heart," sho wailed. At the end of the week Harrison left us, a broken and rabbit-ridden man. George saw him off at the gate. " I can see that it is little use to expect much from a-place so infested with rabbits," he wrote. " I suppose I shall have to agree with the remissions you have been asking for. Meantime, I am forwarding strychnine. Please use it immediately and drastically." " As if wo should," said Barbara indignantly as she smilingly watched George decapitate a row of young lettuces. " No, don't stop him. The darling's earned them."-