THE FARMER’S HELPERS (Continued)

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CHAPTER LXII. THE FARMER’S HELPERS (Continued)

“The hedge-hog’s diet consists especially of insects. The lowest order of vermin is disdained by him as too small, but a June-bug larva or a fat-bellied cricket is a capital prize, and when these are not too deeply buried he burrows with claws and snout to unearth them. All night long he goes prowling around, routing out and crunching a goodly number of our enemies, without doing any appreciable harm himself.

“Listen now to what I am going to relate to you from the book of a learned observer. ‘I had in a box,’ he says, ‘a female hedge-hog with her sucklings; and I added to the occupants of the box a vigorous viper, which coiled itself up in one corner. The hedge-hog slowly approached and smelt of the reptile, whereupon the latter raised its head and put itself on guard, showing the while its venomous fangs. For a moment the aggressor recoiled, but only to resume the offensive immediately after and with no sign of fear. The viper then bit the animal on the end of its snout. The hedge-hog licked its bleeding wound, and in doing so received a second bite on the tongue without suffering itself to be at [349]all intimidated. Finally it seized the serpent by the middle of its body, and the two adversaries rolled together on the floor in a furious struggle, the quadruped grunting and snorting, the reptile hissing and making repeated use of its fangs. Suddenly the hedge-hog seized its antagonist’s head and crunched it between its teeth, after which, without the least sign of perturbation, it proceeded to devour the forward half of the body. That done, it returned to the opposite corner of the box and, lying on its side, calmly began to suckle its young. On the morrow it ate the rest of the viper. The same experiment was several times repeated, with an interval of some days between each repetition and the next, but the issue was always the same: in spite of wounds that set its snout to bleeding, the hedge-hog invariably finished by devouring the reptile, and neither the mother nor her young showed any ill effects from the experience.’

“It is to be assumed that the hedge-hog has not received the gift of withstanding the venom of reptiles only to leave that gift unemployed. The animal is evidently intended to find its chief pleasure in haunting the places frequented by the viper; in its nightly rounds among the underbrush it must often catch the lurking serpent and make short work of the venomous creature. What valuable service it must render in regions infested by this dangerous reptile! And yet man is the hedge-hog’s inveterate foe, showering it with maledictions and treating it as an unclean beast good for nothing except perhaps [350]to arouse the fury of dogs, which have to beware of its bristling back. Do not, my children, imitate this evil example, but respect the hedge-hog for ridding you of the cut-worm and the viper.

“Now as to the mole, what does it eat? The best way to decide the question of an animal’s diet is to examine the contents of its stomach. Let us, then, open the mole’s stomach and see for ourselves. Sometimes it is found to contain red fragments of the common earth-worm; sometimes a hash of beetles, recognizable from the tough remains that have resisted digestion, such as bits of claws and wing-sheaths; sometimes, again, and oftener than not, a marmalade of larvæ, especially those of the June-bug, with their distinctive signs like the mandibles and the hard casing of the head. One finds, in short, a little of every sort of game haunting the soil,—polypods and millepeds, insects and caterpillars, moths in the chrysalis, underground worms and nymphs, and so on; but the minutest scrutiny fails to discover a single particle of vegetable matter.

“The mole, then, is exclusively carnivorous, and furthermore it has a monstrous appetite, a perfectly insatiable stomach that in twelve hours demands a quantity of food equal to the animal’s weight. The mole’s existence is one gluttonous frenzy, ever renewing itself, never appeased; a few hours’ abstinence suffices to kill the creature. To still the anguish of that stomach, which is no sooner stuffed with food than it is emptied again, what can the animal count upon? On the grubs living in the ground, [351]and especially on those of the June-bug, tender and fat. It is a small creature for supplying the wants of such an appetite, but its numbers make up for its littleness. What a massacre of worms, then, must not the mole be credited with in the season when worms abound! Scarcely is one meal finished before another begins, and at each repast the worms must be gobbled up by the dozen. To clear a field of these formidable ravagers the farmer has no helper equal to the mole. The only regret is that to reach the vermin on which the animal lives, it has to burrow among the roots where they have their haunts. Many roots that lie in the way are necessarily ruptured in this work; plants are broken off and destroyed; and, finally, the little piles of earth, or mole-hills, heaped up by the animal in the course of its excavations, impede the reaper when harvest-time comes around. Never mind: the worms would have caused much more serious damage, and to get rid of them there is nothing like this ravenous insect-hunter. Therefore, children, never molest the mole, the protector of our crops.

“The toad is harmless, but that is not enough to commend the creature to our attention. It too is a helper of great worth, a greedy devourer of slugs, beetles, larvæ, and every sort of vermin. Discreetly withdrawn by day under the cool cover of a stone in some obscure hole, it leaves its retreat at nightfall to make its regular rounds, propelling itself, hoppity-hop, on its ample stomach. Here is a slug on its way to the lettuce-plants; yonder is a cricket chirping [352]at the entrance to its hole; and over there a June-bug is laying its eggs in the ground. Master toad comes along in circumspect fashion, opens his cavernous mouth, and in three gulps swallows them all with a gurgle of satisfaction. Oh, but that was good! Now for some more of the same sort.

Common American Toad

“He continues on his rounds, and when dawn begins to glimmer in the east what kind of a hodge-podge of variegated vermin must there not be in the glutton’s capacious maw? Yet they kill this useful creature—stone it to death because, forsooth, it is not so handsome as it might be. My children, may you never be guilty of such cruelty, such foolish and mischievous cruelty! Never stone the toad, for in doing so you would be robbing the fields of a vigilant guardian. Let the poor creature perform in peace its appointed task as destroyer of worms and insects.

“Finally, and not least of all, must be mentioned the various birds, chiefly the little birds of our fields and farm-yards, that help the farmer by devouring harmful insects and the seeds of wild grasses and intrusive weeds. These indefatigable assistants, however, we have already discussed, and we have gratefully acknowledged our indebtedness to them. [353]No more, then, need be said about them at present, except in the way of renewed admonition never to molest them, never to rob their nests; for they are our friends and benefactors.”

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