Morris tribune., 1911-08-18
KILLING FRIENDS.
Owls and Hawks are Friends
that Feed on Enemies.

By C. r. Barnes, Extension Divi-
vision. MINI. College of Agriculture.
Every time gun is fired which
brings down an owl, hawk, a crow,
crane. heron. bittern or shrike, the
farmers loses friend; and note of
welcome is sounded for the ever-in-
creasing army of field-mice-an army
which now counts it's numbers in bill
lions. and which yearly levies upon
the farmers of the United States a
tax greater than the pension roll, as
great as the cost of the Panama Canal.
For these birds are the natural enemies
of the mice-they are the foremost
of the agencies with which Nature
has proposed to keep the multiplica-
tion of these predatory rodents with
in bounds.
Almost as inviting to the mice is
the welcome sounded whenever the
gun brings down fox, a weasel, a
mink, skunk, racoon, coyote, lynx,
badger or shrew. Except for an oc-
casional tribute levied on the hem
something against which it is
easy to guard these animals are
harmless, and they find in mice their
natural food. In the same category
may be placed a great number of
harmless snakes.
If these birds and animals should be
allowed to multiply unmolested, the
farmers and the nation might soon be
eased of the awful burden now carried
to support the predatory army of
mice. Lest the figures above may fail
to impress the readers imagination.
let it be said that each mouse actually
consumes in a year thirty pounds of
food, such as is suitable for a COW.
Suppose this food to consist of hay
only-one of the cheapest of feeds.
We then find that single billion of
mice, eating thirty pounds each, will
consume Is. .OOn, 900 tons. At $12 a
ton, the contribution of the farms to
the support of the mice would foot
up $3.50, 900, 900 year. But what
of the grain, the fruit and the garden
vegetables consumed? What of the
costly orchards girdled and ruined by
mice? Who viii venture To saw that
the destruction wrought in these will
not over-balance the value of Is. O0O,-
900 tons of mere hay?
Two years ago, an unfortunate Wis
consin orchardist found that all the
trees in his apple-orchard-an Or
chard which by painstaking endeavor
had been wrought to such a degree
of productivity as to be capable of
yielding $4,000 year-had been
girdled and killed by mice working
under the snow. And this is how the
mice gained the numbers and audacity
which enabled them to accomplish
such work of ruin:
"Nailed to his barn door was the
carcass of an owl which he had shot
and nailed up as a warning to others
of its kind. In the stomach of that
owl, which was opened in the pre-
sence of the stricken orchardman by an
expert of the Federal Biological Sur
vey, were found the remains of nine
field mice. That owl, a real bene-
factor, had been destroyed by the man
whose orchard he had been striving,
with all gourmand's energy to con-
serve.
''He was friend and a fellow
worker and yet you killed him. said
the scientist as he turned to the Or
chardman. He came here to eat the
field mice and to try to save your or
chard. He was dinning we'll and he
would have called friends and family
to his assistance if he had been left
alive. Your trees are gone and you
have yourself to blame for the loss.
Hawks and owls are the orchardman's
assistants and you couldn't do any
better than to start new orchard and
start at the same time propagation
houses for the growing of those spe-
cies of birds.''
This particular instance of the cost
illness of the warfare waged against
the birds and animals which prey up
on mice is more striking because the
loss was concentrated upon a single
individual. But that is poor agri-
cultural township indeed, where the
loss to the whole number of farmers,
from the same cause, does not aggre-
gate So, 900 year.