RUN RABBIT RUN

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 10, 18 June 1945, Page 27

RUN RABBIT RUN

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Generally rabbits are well thought of and often loved. No one could doubt the popularity of White Rabbit, Brer Rabbit (smarter than Brer Fox), Walt Disney’s Thumper, Peter Rabbit, or the dipsomaniac’s imaginary (six feet one inch and a half long) rabbit, one of the main characters in the current New York stage success, Harvey. Rabbits in hutches are kept, fondly, by children. Rabbits (coupon free— prices from s|d. to B|d. a lb.) stewed, roasted, stuffed, and in pies are eaten by adults and children. In some hotels people have eaten roast chicken which never laid eggs, but which used once to have long floppy ears and a fast moving lollop; and doubtless some of the diners have been among those who wear the fifty imitation furs, ranging from mink to sable, which once kept rabbits warm. But rabbits, like the New Deal, are not always popular. With Otago Central landholders, who have more opportunity of knowing them than any other section of New Zealand’s population, they are most unpopular they say, just could not be worse. Rabbits were introduced into Otago Central about 1870 for the sport of shooting. They outlived, or outbred, their welcome in short time ; they have been shot at ever since, but it has been machine-gun breeding against rifle-fire shooting —and the rabbits have had the sport. Luxuriant pasture land, firstclass for stock, was nibbled as bare as dry bones, and corkscrewed full of holes. Rabbits and floods switched early pros-

perity into ruin for the runholders. Snares, traps, packs of dogs, and poison were used, but it was not until hundreds of miles of rabbit-proof fencing had been erected that there was any promise of control. Unfenced areas, however, remained a breeding-ground that menaced the land held by more enterprising farmers. After the last war when the bottom dropped out of the rabbit-skin market, when there was no longer a demand for the tinned carcasses which had been exported in large quantities for several years, rabbiters would not pay for trapping rights, and land holders could not afford to employ them. Again the pest increased and became even more out of control. Gone were the days when in a hard winter rabbits -would follow close behind the man laying the poison, snatching at the bait, when two or three men could earn more than

£I, OOO for a season’s work. Gradually Rabbit Boards were set up; landowners ere rated, and with the money collected rabbiters were encouraged, poison was sold at bedrock price, regular inspections were made, and owners who let their properties become overrun were prosecuted. More than 10,000,000 rabbit and hare skins (13,500,000 in 1941 ; value, £1,000,000) are exported each year from New Zealand, mostly to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Last year, too, 1,750,000 frozen carcasses were sent overseas ; this year the number is expected to be 3,000,000. Numbers of these skins and carcasses came from the rabbit freezing factory at Alexandra, Otago Central. Skins which are stretched on wires take three or four days to dry. The factory has about 60,000 wires, and 35,000 skins can be dried at once in one shed. In a summer bale, skins number about 4,000 (rabbits are born in the spring, and about January, when trapping begins, are only medium size) ; in the winter only about 2,500 are needed to make up a bale. From the

higher prices paid for winter skins a levy is deducted to increase the return to rabbiters in summer for the skins of milky does and kittens (baby rabbits) which, ordinarily, have little commercial value—in this way rabbiters are encouraged to reduce the pest. Winter skins are of much higher quality, and the average price is more than Is. a skin ; some bring 2s. and more each ; and at the last sales one lot of 100 skins brought £lB 10s. Fur coats and furs of every type are made from these skins ; and although a few years ago it was not difficult to pick the imitation from the genuine, to-day it can be done only by the most expert of experts. The rabbiter, whose main difficulty is to pack the carcasses to the roadline to be picked up by trucks, has to gut and bleed the rabbits without bruising them while they are still warm, to avoid rejects. Horses can carry up to 100 rabbits, depending on the country and the horse; loaded trucks carry 3,000. At the factory heads are chopped off, the rabbits skinned, cleaned, washed, graded into three sizes, and packed.

Otago Central rabbits, because of the rigorous winter climate and high country are remarkably free from disease ; the manager of the factory said he had seen only one rabbit in a year with anything worse than an unhealthy back which the bucks sometimes develop from fighting each other. Close inspection is always made, however, for hydatids, a disease which is found more often in Southland, parts of which are also thickly infested with rabbits. From the chiller, where the temperature is kept about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the cases of carcasses (about 35 to a case in summer, 30 in winter) go to the “ snowbox ” or freezing-chamber, where they stay for four days, the temperature varying from about 12 degrees to zero. (That room would freeze more than rabbits if the door jammed with one of the employees inside.) After the freezing processes, cases are packed into railway vans, specially insulated to stop deterioration for at least three days, for transport to Dunedin. Eight thousand rabbits can be dealt with a day if necessary ; and during the four busiest months more than 80,000 are handled. In the skinning-room rabbits are everywhere. French greys and black and whites predominate, there is an occasional black and a few hares. All have big, even at this stage, bright eyes. Some are minus a leg from an earlier encounter with a trap. Rolls of scrim, with which the hauls are protected from

flies, lie waiting to be distributed to the trappers. Chirping flocks of birds, mostly sparrows, hop and flutter about (Alexandra birds must be the best fed in New Zealand ; as soon as the fruit season is past its best they leave the orchards to come for the pickings of fat at the rabbit-factory). So these are the rabbits which, in addition to their other (and acknowledged) uses, sometimes are served as chicken, used in some salmon and shrimp pastes, the skins manufactured into expensive and rare fur coats. Exactly how, you wonder, did human beings come to use the expression “ as silly as a rabbit.”

Twelve Miles Of Ink.— A fountain pen which be filled only once a year is now produced in Britain. The pen Jias no nib, but a stylographic point a wire enclosed in a tube which releases ink when pressed. Its barrel, which holds twelve miles of ink, is only the size of an ordinary fountain pen. The pen, invented during the war, was designed for pilots to write at heights where air pressure is so low' that an ordinary fountain pen will explode. Overseas customers will be the first to use this novel invention, reports the London Daily Mail. Only 1 per cent, of the pens now being manufactured will be retained for the British home market.