To Kill or Spare ?
My garden and paddock have been frequented for many months by a weasel, which had been allowed the free-play of life. It was shot the other day at the boundary for the reason that it was carrying a young thrush in its jaws. One cannot, it seems, have it both ways—have both the young birds and the vermin ; but my feeling is that the weasel plays a useful part. It does not (as some are inclined to believe) kill rats, at any rate grown rats ; but the two are uncongenial. Is it due to the presence of weasels that while a neighbour grumbles about -" the plague of rats" about the premises, I have no rats at all, almost for the first time in my experience ? It is surprising that birds' nests are so seldom harried by weasels for (as I have often seen) they climb trees and hedge bushes
as easily as they run about the grasses ; and at times they will use an old nest as sleeping quarters in winter. It is not a had rule to let the balance of nature abide, so far as this is possible in deeply civilised country where the towns necessarily destroy the equipoise.
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