Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 188, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 August 1918 — REVERTED TO TYPE [ARTICLE]

REVERTED TO TYPE

Ferret’s Night Off an Orgy of Slaughter. Little Killer Left Thick Trail of Dead Which He Had Destroyed for the Pure Joy of Slaying, and Went Home. His mother was a ferret, lean, yellow and pink eyed and a she devil to boot, says a writer In London Answers. His father was worse, a wild polecat of the mountains, and a worse devil than ever. But he, the cherub, was so soft and furry and fat and creamy, and, though he had got pink eyes, there seemed to be nothing else of his mother and father about him. He never bit, he never spat, and he never used bad language, and he lived upon bread and milk, like a gentleman. So he was till the spring broke. It was their own fault, the ferreters. They took him out rftbbiting, as usual. They put a collar with a bell on round his neck, as usual, and a long, long string on the collar, as usual, and they turned him into a rabbit warren, as usual. And he sneezed three times, as usual, and M walked docilely down the first rabbit hole he came to, as usual, to turn out the rabbits from their burrows, as usual, that the sportsmen outside might shoot them as they bolted. So far, until he, got Into the middle of the mazes of tunnels, the inky darknesses, and the stuffy heat, full of the smell of castor oil —don’t know why, by the way—and he could hear the drumming of rabbits’ feet fleeing before his ghostly, terrible self, everything happened as usual. Then nothing did. He was pulled up with a Jerk that nearly choked him. He tried going forwtird, but it was all no good. He had only a yard of play either way. His line was entangled in a root. The hours passed, and the ferreters, after trying every device known to man to get him out, gave it up and went home. The cherub did not give it up. He worried slowly, and he chafed, he pulled, and tugged, he backed, and he sweated, and he sneezed, and finally his collar came undone or broke. The cherub sneezed three times, and walked three yards. Then he realized he was free. It was the first time In all his life he had been free, and it acted upon him. In that second his mother, plus his father, got to work in his own body, and he began. It was really very clean killing. Fifteen rabbits done to death, each with a single, clean fang stroke behind the ears —was not so bad for one small ferret. But he Improved, for he slew 20 in the next hour —leaving every carcass untouched where it lay—and, getting thirsty, came above ground for water. The water he did not find, but discovered fowls in a fowlhouse instead, and, as I said, being thirsty, drank blood. There were no live fowls In that hen roost when he left He visited the hutches of the Belgian hares, which he slew, and the pigeon cote, where he got more blood. After that he returned a mile across country, killing three partridges on the way; drank at the dog’s trough—biting the dog badly in the process—walked Into his own hutch and was found curled, up, calmly asleep, among the hay neit morning.