Roland in the ricks
As a change from my usual reports on game and wildfowl on marsh and upland, let me turn to those days of yore in the rickyards of farms of all sizes; to the destruction of rats there. The ferreting, shooting and trapping of them in farm buildings and poultry runs, in pigsties and field banks, is too wide a subject to cover here. Our confines must be the borders of rickyards and the ricks themselves.
Rats are thirsty little animals and cannot remain happy for long without water. Any country boy of my vintage knew this well, and made use of his knowledge in two main ways in the area of the rickyard. In the first place, when on snaring bent, he would
