Прыгоды з жыцця прыроды
Adventures from the life of nature
Вячаслаў Грамыка
Для сярэдняга школьнага ўзросту
Выдавец: Беларусь
Памер: 263с.
Мінск 2003
The forester stopped. What will happen next? Hares distinguish motionless objects poorly. Everything witnessed that it had been raised from its bed somewhere far away and there was no longer chase after it.
Meanwhile, the distance between them had been shortening with every minute. Now, some twenty steps remained... Fifteen... And here the hare stopped. But neither backwards nor to the sides did it run. It sat down on rear paws and raised up its head very high, holding its front paws also raised high in the air like a ground squirrel in the steppe near its burrow. In such a pose it stood for several minutes, turned its head to the sides and lowered down on all the four paws. Then it raised its head and listened attentively to the surroundings.
The old man could hardly keep himself from laughing, but thought to himself: should you meet me like that another time,
I would have taught you a lesson! But now it is impossible, wolves may be put on alert.
Kuzmich clapped his palms — as if a slight shot awoke stiffened frozen air. Surprised, the hare darted off headlong from this place and dashed at random forward finding itself just a few steps from the forester, so that the latter, for the sake of a joke, even tried to kick it to its rear with his ski, but the hare drew its ears to its back very tightly and rushed away from the danger.
The old man slid down the last hill and drove right to the hut.
He could hardly put his skis off as, right on the threshold, the mother met him. My mother was sharp-tongued, or, perhaps, 1 exaggerate a bit; at least, as they say, she didn't seek her word in her pocket.
“Well? A hunter goes into the forest and a beast comes into the hut?” she said all of a sudden and both dissatisfaction and certain concern could be traced in her voice. “Here you are!” and she threw a hen with gnawed-off head under his feet. “A shashok appeared again, now it will strangle all hens. There is no salvation from it. It is worse than those wolves!”
Kuzmich began to feel ill at ease. She was right — there was quite a hunter in the hut and here it was: beasts were not only fearless, but strangled hens just under his nose. As if they decided to mock at him.
“Worse or not worse, but all the same, it is not very pleasant. Something should be done,” the forester answered after embarrassing silence, “I will think it over now.”
“Let the man enter the hut and have some meal. He has been on his feet all day long,” interfered the father who had returned home already, “instead you fell upon him like that rooster upon a hen, peeking from the very threshold.”
“Oh dear! And here is another one!” the mother wouldn't to calm down, 'and you dare call yourself a man! Soon bears will live in the shed, not only shashoks...'
After a snack Kuzmich and my father went to the shed to see what the matter was.
What is a shashok? — you may ask. It is a kind of a small wild beast. Polecat, black polecat — they call it differently in different regions of Belarus. This fact tells by itself that this wild animal is
widely spread on our territory and well known to a man. The correct biological name of it is black polecat or polecat. In our area it was call shashok for some reason.
Though polecat is an inhabitant of deciduous and mixed forests, it likes most clearings and charred tree trunks, bushes on river banks and shores of lake; in winter it almost exclusively lives close to man and occupies old littered corners of different household buildings. At such time polecat is capable to inflict considerable damage to man: it pounces upon hens, ducks and even geese, sometimes without interrupting hunting until it strangles all the poultry. Polecat eats out only marrow of the poultry. Besides, it chases after house rats, mice, catches small wild game, which reaches out for man's dwelling in winter.
In summertime shashok lives on mice and vole-mice, pounces upon young leverets, devours eggs and nestlings of wild game, which nestle on the ground. Mostly it conducts the night way of life, but sometimes hunts in daytime as well.
Polecat arranges its nest in a well-covered place — under a twisted stump of an old tree, in burrows, on the eaves of huts, under the floors of old buildings in abandoned corners, etc. Polecat's body is thin with an arch-like bend of its backbone.
So in that winter it appeared again at our place and we feared lest it should have strangled all our hens.
Meanwhile, Kuzmich and the father were untangling some “charms” in the yard. Having put my clothes on, I went out as well. They had already examined “the place of crime” and the forester now was telling the father how they usually fought this small wild animal.
“In the morning,” the forester was telling, “until night tracks are not trampled by people and domestic animals you have to go round the buildings on the outskirts, to reveal the paths, along which the polecat walks; you have to place traps on them in the evening. At the same time, there is no need to provide special camouflage since a polecat is not very cautious, but is also a very arrogant beast of prey, which is confident in its force and dexterity. And that lets it down in such cases. Though it is worthwhile to put in some bait: bloody bits of meat with rotten eggs at the sides are best for this purpose.”
Kuzmich was telling all this to my father with dignity and in detail.
“The only trouble is that I have no such traps with me, they are at home and it's a long way from here; moreover, wolves should be watched over. It is more important than a polecat,” meditated the old man.
Then he continued, “They hunt after polecat also with dogs, but this kind of hunting is rather difficult. First of all, polecat is exclusively enduring. Sometimes it seems mortally wounded, but it manages somehow to escape pursuit and survive. Besides, there are two individual glands at the polecat's tail; at the moment of danger the animal lets out from them substances with a very strong and bad smell and they, these substances, snatch from a dog any vigor and desire to follow the track. So, you may think for yourself what to do in such situation. Perhaps, making a kind of a trap would be the best way-out.”
They did as he said. A saw yelped in the evening right inside the hut, sawdust was scattered around, a plane rustled rhythmically. And soon a long wooden box was ready. It resembles a nestling box, but without a round window and longer, perhaps, three or five times. From one end the box was blocked up and at another the cover was constructed so ingenious that, if necessary, it could be raised and fixed in a suspended position. In the remote comer they placed bait — a piece of the hen strangled by the animal tied to a planed stick with a cord. The stick supported the cover and held it in such a position that the entrance into the box was open permanently.
“Now let's take it into the shed and then we'll go to bed! No need to make too much noise tonight,” Kuzmich said resolutely...
Next morning the father was the first to get up and having thrown a leather jacket upon his shoulders, he went to the shed. He listened attentively — and really something was moving inside the box.
First, they drove a polecat into a small birdcage, which my brother had made once. Everybody began to examine the scoundrel with interest. It was a pretty large animal about thirty or more centimeters long. It, as a detained thief, was rushing from side to side casting angry looks of small eyes.
There was no end to our fun and the mother was happy as a child:
“Well, now the hens will be safe and sound!”
The satisfied forester told a little bit more about the animal's life. From his story we learnt that in the old days some amateurs used polecat as a domestic animal. Taken from a burrow blind, polecats got easily used to man, became tame. They can be kept at home instead of cats. At the same time, polecats cruelly annihilate not only mice, but also rats, which is not sometimes beyond cats' power.
Besides, Kuzmich told us that polecat is a valuable fur animal. A characteristic feature of polecats is that their hair is of two colorings, which differ sharply — a rather dark chestnut or nearly black one, from under which dense layers of bright yellow hair shine.
“One or two of them more, and you'll get at least a collar, if not a hat. Make a more spacious cage, let the children have fun,” the forester advised to the father.
Everyone was so preoccupied with the animal that they forgot about the meal and only Kuzmich, having eaten quickly a loaf of bread with fat, as before, instantly got his things ready and made for the forest again.
But the bait continued to lie untouched. Kuzmich was back very soon. He sat making, with my brother, a more spacious cage for the polecat, laughing together with everybody. Sometimes he became absolutely serious, disturbing thoughts about wolves might have been seizing him then and the forester began to worry again (in the thousandth time!): will they come at all?
Several days more passed. Even magpies got the habit of eating the carrion; it was good that wild boars failed to notice it and the wolves seemed to have disappeared.
Only on the eleventh day, walking along the familiar route again, Kuzmich saw a broad, even track of a wolf brood.
He drove a bit closer to the bait: that is right, wolves had been here and “made use” of a good half of it, so they were somewhere nearby.
Well, you have to keep your ears up. Every minute is precious now.
Kuzmich estimated long ago where they might be lying. That is why, losing no time for unnecessary search, he dashed to fetch flags and call people.
They agreed to meet together in the evening and before that Kuzmich chose three hunters to help him and losing no time returned to the forest. They took with them all cords with flags, coils, small reels, a tangle of packthread and a spare piece of red cloth just in case. They had to close round a rather considerable piece of forest track and if there was a shortage of cord, what would they do then? Some reserve might be handy.
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