A Pioneer of Fiordland

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21462, 8 April 1933, Page 4 (Supplement)

A Pioneer of Fiordland

U\ 'ADVENTURES OF ANDREAS REISCHEK \§ ... 'A k!

THE PLAGUE OF RATS IN CHALKY SOUND

No. V. No doubt every reader has heard of the awful fate of the wicked Bishop Hatto, who cheated the poor, and whose bones were picked by rats in his castle on the Rhine, but few of you can have any idea of the terrible ravages of the brown rat upon the bird-life of New Zealand. Andreas Reischek knew all about it, however. He says: "At Chalky Sound I had continual opportunities of observing the ravages of-the brown rat, one *>f the great plagues of New Zealand. The country, especially toward the sea, cow swarms with these animals, introduced originally from European ships. "They are a pest in the North Island, but round the sounds of the West Coast 1 found them more numerous still. I shot rats of all colours, yellow-brown, speckled, silver grey, brown, grey and black. At a height of nearly 4000 ft. in Dusky Sound I found numbers of them, and in winter, when the mountains •were covered with snow, I came across their tracks repeatedly. Reischek poisoned as many as he could, but nothing seemed to make any (difference. Most of us know the intense annoyance of a rat gnawing somewhere in a wall just overhead when we want to go to sleep at night, but the Chalky - Sound rats must have made a regular pandemonium! They kept the unfortunate - explorer awake all night, knocking things down off the walls, gnawing at his • stores and digging holes round the hut. They even dug up the potatoes in Rimmer's garden and dragged them away! What was even worse wa« that Reischek'* treasured specimens were also in danger. He hung up poiisoned bird skins on the beams of the hut, but the rats climbed up and gnawed them to bits. Even skeletons which he had strung on wires 12ft. from the ground were attacked. First the rats shook the wires, then, finding their booty remaine fast, they actually wound their tails round the wire and slid down upon the _" kel f. t The country B warmed with them." continues the explorer, "and they used to, gnaw our boots before our very eyes. While we were eating our supper by the fire, they would come along behind us- and gnaw the bones we ha thrown aside for Caesar. , 1 BUt £sls T very heavy did not found a mob of tfcem sitting round his head, tmawine His hafr and beard, and he shot out of bed as though a tarantula had -.tunThim got a stick, and slew as many of his tormentor, as he could. It tcok t h e explorers five months of shooting, trapping and poisonmg before ,o ..y I never found ... sitting Certainly there singularly little ™ t ,h.re was practically no bird song in the forest. r^"hr^n h tv":d on "their wicked work here a. well a. '"'pllairremember. boys and girls, that .11 these adventures of the brave are r .written from the .b sorfWy i~g ***££ b /c^7.";;^»Ah M .", r rt interestfug than any v work of fiction. '