The Guinea-Fowl Were Too Wild
To Approach Successfully; However, We Shot Them Daily.
I set little boys
to scream from daylight till sunset to scare the clouds of small birds;
but the boys screamed themselves to sleep, and the sparrows quickly
discovered the incapacity of the watchers.
Wild fowl were so numerous on
an island opposite the farm that we not only shot them as we required,
but on one occasion Lieutenant Baker and myself bagged in about two
hours sixty-eight ducks and geese, most of which were single shots in
flight overhead.
I found the necessity of re-sowing the land so thickly that there should
be sufficient grain to allow for the depredations of our enemies. I set
vermin traps and caught the guinea-fowl. Then the natural enemy appeared
in the wild cats, who took the guinea-fowls out of the traps. At first
the men were suspected of stealing the birds, but the unmistakable
tracks of the wild cats were found close to the traps, and shortly after
the wily cats themselves became victims. These were generally of the
genus Herpestris.
When the crops, having resisted many enemies, appeared above ground,
they were attacked by the mole crickets in formidable numbers. These
destructive insects lived beneath the small solid clods of earth, and
issuing forth at night, they bit the young shoot clean off close to the
parent grain at the point of extreme sweetness. The garden suffered
terribly from these insects, which destroyed whole rows of cucumber
plants.
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