Back to 1984: Hunting in the Mountains

Chapter 9 Shu Shu, where are you escaping? !

Now is the autumn harvest season, and most of the yellow mice have given birth to baby yellow mice. The early-born yellow mice are almost ready to leave the nest, but have not yet left the nest. If you are lucky, you can get two or three in one nest. "

"Really? One pound or two, two or three would be four or five pounds, right?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"Haha~ Let's find it quickly. I really like eating yellow rat meat. My dad gave us some before..."

Yu Xiaowei suddenly stopped talking.

He thought of his father.

Yu Qiutang was very attentive and understood the child's feelings. He wanted to empathize with him, but he found that he no longer had deep feelings for his brother. This might be because his brother had passed away for decades, and the feelings had gradually faded.

Forgetting is sometimes so helpless.

After walking a short distance forward, Yu Qiutang suddenly stopped and looked happy.

Yu Xiaowei was walking behind him and accidentally bumped into his back, "Why aren't you leaving?"

"Look!"

Yu Qiutang squatted down and looked at the pile of freshly turned yellow soil in front of him. Compared with the dried soil around it, the color of this pile of soil was slightly reddish, and the soil had not yet completely dried up.

"Is this a weasel's nest?" Yu Xiaowei asked in a low voice. He had no time to commemorate his deceased father. The weasels he might face attracted all his attention.

"Yeah, it's a new nest."

Yu Qiutang marked the small raised mound of earth and stood up to search around the nest.

"Uncle, what are you looking for?"

"Find another exit. Go to the field and fetch the bucket for us."

"Okay." Yu Xiaowei ran towards the edge of the field happily.

Yu Qiutang used the found mound as a radius and began to circle around it looking for another nest.

As the saying goes, a cunning rabbit has three burrows.

Each hare nest has at least three entrances, and sometimes as many as seven or eight. A nest of rabbits shares the same entrance, and they can run around freely in the hole.

Yellow rats are not as smart as rabbits, but they are also creatures selected by nature and have their own survival intelligence. They usually have two exits, which Yu Qiutang likes to call the front and back doors.

Just now I saw that the entrance of the nest was full of new soil. That was actually the back door, or a cover, a fake hole.

Yellow rats will pile up a pile of soil at the back door of their nests, making people think that there is a hole underneath, but in fact the hole leads directly downward, and another drainage outlet will be dug out.

Whether it is people, weasels, badgers, or even some snakes that catch yellow rats, if they just push away the soil at the entrance of the den and see a cave, they will think that they are inside.

In fact, no matter what means are used, the wrong hole will never catch the right yellow mouse.

In this way, the weasel gives all its natural enemies an illusion that this is an empty weasel nest and they will look for another one, so they can survive.

But how could this method fool Yu Qiutang, an old hand? He already knew all about this trick.

Humans mainly rely on water to catch yellow rats.

Most rats have the ability to swim for a short time, but they cannot stay in water all the time. If you pour water into the holes of yellow rats, they will become unable to drink and will line up to run out.

People just need to put an open bag at the entrance of the hole and put them all in.

Even if the expert is a mouse catcher, he can just put a shovel at the entrance of the hole. When a mouse comes out, he can just turn the shovel over and press it down. The shovel is like a barrier, and no mouse can get out.

If an inexperienced person finally carries a bucket of water from the canal and pours it into the fake nest, and there is no reaction, and then he pours another bucket of water, and there is still no reaction, then he basically won't continue pouring.

The fake nest of a yellow rat often requires four or five buckets of water to be filled.

These little bits of knowledge seem simple, but not everyone understands them. In the early years, people could not afford meat and most of them did not know how to hunt. Eating yellow rat meat was a treat, so who would be willing to tell others about it? Later, when the method became widely known, life became much better. There were many ways to eat meat, but yellow rats and house mice were genetically mixed, so it was not safe to eat, so the method was meaningless.

Yu Qiutang stopped in front of a small pile of edamame leaves.

A look of pride appeared on his lips.

The little yellow rat is trying to use sleight of hand. No matter what kind of conspiracy or trick it is, it can't escape our sharp eyes.

He squatted down and gently dug away the leaves. Sure enough, he saw a small raised waterproof platform underneath. Under the platform was a hole with a diameter of five or six centimeters, which was the real entrance and exit for the yellow rat.

There were small paw prints of a yellow rat at the entrance of the cave, as well as soybeans and corn kernels scattered at the entrance during the transportation.

The real cave entrance is usually no more than five meters away from the fake cave entrance. The two caves are connected, but there is a small partition in the middle to prevent water from pouring in from the fake entrance or snakes from sneaking in and running into the real cave.

"Uncle, there is a hole here?"

Yu Xiaowei came over carrying a bucket of water. At that time, the buckets were all old-style buckets, and a bucket of water weighed more than 40 kilograms. The young man had a hard time carrying it, and he was sweating profusely. His face was red and shiny.

"Well, this is the real hole."

Yu Qiutang told his nephew the principle of the weasel burrow and asked Yu Xiaowei to plug the false opening with something to prevent them from breaking the partition and running out of the burrow through the false opening in a hurry.

It takes a lot of people to catch yellow rats.

It is difficult to complete the task by one person. If there are two people, they must cooperate in the pouring. They cannot assign one person to guard the fake holes, so they can only plug them.

"Hey, then shall we drink it now?"

Yu Qiutang looked up at the sky. The sun was at its zenith, around one o'clock in the afternoon, which was also the hottest time of the day.

Will the yellow rats come out of their nests? They are all staying inside to avoid the heat. It is a good opportunity to catch them all.

"You do the watering, and I'll use the shovel to pat them. I don't think you'll be able to react in the beginning. They won't be able to bear the water and will rush out happily. If you don't pat them, they'll definitely run away."

"Okay, it's up to you."

Yu Xiaowei held the bucket and got into position according to Yu Qiutang's instructions. Yu Qiutang placed a shovel at the entrance of the nest. Whenever a yellow rat came out, he would knock it out with a shovel and then put it in a bag.

Everything was ready. With Yu Qiutang's shout of "pour", the water in Yu Xiaowei's bucket gurgled into the hole, filling half the bucket in one breath.

"Why hasn't it come out yet? Do you need to drink more?"

"Keep pouring, don't stop."

"okay."

Yu Xiaowei did not delay and prepared to pour a bucket of water into the hole. However, just when he filled more than half of the bucket, water overflowed from the hole, and small bubbles were also appearing at the hole.

"Is it full?" Yu Xiaowei stopped again.

"It's time to witness a miracle," Yu Qiutang is experienced and knows that this is the yellow rat drinking water. When the naive rats realize that they can't drink up all the water and will drown if they don't come out, they will definitely rush out.

Yu Xiaowei poured in some more water to fill the hole to the highest depth, and then stared at the hole eagerly.

next moment.

A rat's head suddenly emerged from the water. At the moment of escaping, Yu Qiutang was quick-witted and shoveled down quickly, knocking the rat unconscious immediately.

"Quick, pack the bags."

Yu Qiutang used a shovel to push the yellow rat to the side and made preparations again. Sure enough, another one was soon imprisoned.

"Haha, there are two now!!"

(End of this chapter)