There are various ways of dealing with rats around farms. The most obvious is to lay poison, but this could case death to creatures for which it is not intended. Even the corpses of poisoned rats could be attractive to carrion-eaters for which it was not intended. Anyway, in North Yorkshire a syndicate of shooting people organise a rat hunt. Well organised; a pub booked, drinks and hampers packed and the right weapons chosen, a fortnight after the end of the shooting season. Rosie Nickerson tells us about the day in the English Field. The rat pack as she calls them, met at the inn at 8.30 in the morning to eat huge plates of "fried things" and at 9.30, were off, armed with spades, sticks, ferrets and terriers. At the first hedge the ground was riddled with rat holes. Nothing doing. "And there we stood: 16 ratters and one journalist, weapons and ballpoint poised in readiness for absolutely nothing." But at the other end of the hedge, terriers were released a long-hairded German pointer.
Then a chain-saw, minus the saw bit, but trailing a long tube from its exhaust, poured smoke down the holes.
Rats came out in plenty, and the terriers with a shake of a rat broke its neck. If a rat was by chance missed by the terriers, the swing of a spade, stick or bat from the hunters did the job. After an hour the score was 30 rats. Then to a field of stubble where, according to the writer, the ground nearly collapsed, so riddled was it with rat holes. One intrepid hunter would even plunge his arm shoulder deep into a hole and haul out a live rat by the tail. Within an hour the haul was so big and the plastic rubbish bin of corpses was so heavy that it took two to lift it. Some rats were 10 inches from nose to tail "and rather rotund."
Writes Rosie: "Despite my revulsion for rats ... I did catch myself silently urging `Run ratty, run, run, run' as each one tried to dodge terriers and sticks to escape. Very few did." At the end of the hunt a sweepstake was run on the number killed. It was 220. But, she remarks, it was a cull, and she is only too aware of the vile diseases rats carry as well as their propensity to eat eggs and nestlings. A traditional photograph with hunters and their trophies laid at their feet, then a back to the inn, "with the last ratter staggering home at 2 a.m." All this near Riveaulx, Yorkshire.