The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [54]
“What else lives here?”
“Mice, voles, squirrels. A badger’s been through recently.”
I pulled a face. “Rats?”
“Hardly any, I should think…not unless you’re leaving rubbish out. Your weasel will have their babies if it can, and there’s a colony of tawny owls in the valley who prey on them.”
“Do you have rats at the farm?”
She nodded. “All farms do. They go for the grain stores and the livestock food.”
“What do you do about them?”
“Make life as difficult as possible, keep animal feed in bins and grain stores in good structural order. They only set up home and breed if they have access to food and water, and find cavities and holes to hide in. They’re like any other animal. They thrive in conditions they can exploit.”
Like MacKenzie, I thought. “You make it sound so simple.”
Jess shrugged. “It is in a way. You only get infestations if you’re lazy or careless. It’s an open invitation to a rat to leave food and rubbish lying around. They like easy pickings, the same way people do.” She paused. “Which isn’t to say I don’t use poison from time to time, or reach for my airgun when a fat one comes nosing around. They can pass Weil’s disease and leptospirosis to humans and animals, and prevention’s a damn sight better than cure.”
This matter-of-fact approach to pest management was appealing, but I couldn’t see her being so sanguine if a plague of locusts descended on her fields. It’s one thing to monitor your own premises for vermin, quite another to look death in the face as your crop is taken by a swarm that has bred and gathered a hundred miles away. In those circumstances, you weep and pray to God for deliverance because there’s nothing on earth that can help you except the charity of foreign governments and NGOs.
When I said this, she replied rather scathingly that BSE and foot-and-mouth were no different. “I lost Dad’s whole herd to BSE when cattle over thirty months had to be incinerated—whether they had the disease or not—and it’s taken me eight years to build another herd half the size. It’s wrecked the beef and dairy industry in this country but you don’t hear much sympathy for farmers.”
“Weren’t you compensated?”
“Nowhere near what each animal was actually worth. It took Dad years to build his herd—he was always winning prizes at the shows—and none of them had BSE. I got an extra sixty quid for every animal that was killed unnecessarily when the tests post-slaughter proved negative. It was a joke…and bloody upsetting. I was pretty fond of those cows.”
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded. “You get on with it. Did your dad lose crops to locusts?”
“Only the human variety. Mugabe took his farm.”
“How long had your family been there?”
“Not long enough,” I said ironically. “Three generations—four if you count me—about the same length of time as Madeleine’s has been in Barton House.”
“How does that make it not long enough?”
“Wrong colour,” I said harshly. “If you’re black, you’ve been there for centuries…never mind you were born in Mozambique or Tanzania. If you’re white your ancestors stole the land from the indigenous people.”
“Is that what your family did?”
“No. My great-grandparents bought ours fair and square, but deeds of title don’t count for much when Zanu-PF thugs turn up on your doorstep.” I shrugged. “There are rights and wrongs on both sides, but stealing the land back again hasn’t solved anything. It’s just made it worse…turned Africa’s breadbasket into a dust-bowl. Ten years ago, the white farmers were producing enough food”—I broke off.
“Go on.”
“No,” I said with an abrupt laugh. “It makes me too angry. Like you and your dad’s herd. I wouldn’t mind so much if the farm had gone to our workers, but it’s been appropriated