Jim Scard, Mole-catcher and Pest Controller
When I drove into the Wiltshire village of Broad Chalke, a few miles south-west of Salisbury, I asked a paper-boy if he knew where Jim Scard lived. With a chuckle, the lad replied: ‘Everyone knows that’. His reply was not surprising, for I was seeking a man whom folk of every station had been calling on for decades, seeking his help both for individuals and for the community at large. He is the countryman’s countryman, whose great knowledge of rural ways and wildlife is firmly rooted in a lifetime’s outdoor employment in many fields. But it is primarily in pest control that this unassuming character has made his mark.
Born in Weymouth, Dorset, on 1 March 1916, Gordon Mortimer Scard (later known to everyone as Jim) never knew his father, a baker who died while Jim was still a toddler. It was his stepfather, ‘an ex-Artillery chap’, who pointed him towards a country occupation. His mother was a cook.
The newly united family moved to Lavington, 5 miles south of Devizes, in Wiltshire, when Jim was nine. His earliest memories are of schooldays at Woodford, near Salisbury, which had been his home since he was 4. There were about 120 children at Woodford school – ‘every village had a lot of kids because there were many more labourers on the land in those days and almost everyone had a large family’.
One of his schoolteachers was a Yorkshireman ‘who was dead keen on cricket. I was only there a week when he gave me a halfpenny for catching him out, but a few days later he caned me with a little willow stick for smoking a broken clay-pipe that someone had thrown away.’
But even before he went to school Jim was attracted to the land. He often used to go out with Fred and Bill Bayford, who were carters and ploughmen and just two of 12 men who were employed on the mixed Home Farm. Jim remembers their horses – 25-30 lovely animals’ – with great affection. ‘There were two teams so that they could change over at lunchtime, but some men had to take an early lunch to sharpen the cutters. Harvesting was with McCormick and Albion binders and they never started till the dew was off because when the canvasses on the machines got wet the tension was spoiled.
‘When the horses were set in their furrows, the ploughmen sometimes used to let them walk on a bit while they stopped to shoot starlings with a catapault. I ate one once – roasted it over a fire. Never again.
‘In the summer they used to bring the young horses out. I always remember one which took over two hours to go round the field just once. Every time the old horses went forward he went back. Trouble was the youngsters were easily scared by the banging of the machinery.
‘One of my earliest memories is of watching ‘em lungeing – a horse going round and round a person on a long lead for hours on end to break it in. But the first chore every day was to feed and clean the lot – at 6 am.’
Wherever you went in the 1920s, horses toiled the long day across every landscape, including the fields of New Farm, on the Blandford road 2 miles from Coombe Bissett, where Jim’s father worked for Ernie White. ‘One day old White said, “Bring young Jim over”, so I went on the Saturday to do a bit of hoeing. “You’ll need something to work with”, he said, so he sent me over to Phil the carter, who gave me a muck-scraper. So back I went with it to knock on White’s door and said “Will this do?”. “Buggers”, said White. “You go back and tell ‘em not to be so silly.” But it was all good fun. Everyone had a laugh in those days.’
Jim helped his father with the hoeing ‘for 30 bob an acre. This was flat hoeing between the rows. Three weeks later we’d clean right round each plant – mangolds, swedes, turnips.’
When Jim was 12 years old, the family went to live at New Farm. ‘Father got a house there because he was available to the farmer for building work as well as haymaking and other jobs. He was a really good builder – I could show you a path now we made 60 years ago, and there’s been a few thousand feet over that.’
On leaving school at 14, Jim became a labourer on New Farm. He had passed his exams to go on for further education but, like most country folk then, the family simply could not afford it.
‘In those days you was a real farm labourer and did a bit of everything – rolling, harrowing, ploughing and hedge-trimming as well as helping out with the animals. By golly, I really earned my starting wage of 10s, but I did get 3d an hour overtime after fifty hours in a week, working 6 am to 5 pm.’
Jim has mixed memories of White. ‘He was a cruel man. One day he went to milk a heifer and she kicked him, so he set about her with a milking stool. He used to put a strap around their legs and then push them till they fell over. After a fright like that all he had to do was tie the strap round their legs again and they wouldn’t budge an inch, let alone kick him.
‘Nobody ever worked on Sunday. Only the milking was done then – 30 cows twice a day by hand. Sunday afternoon was red letter – that was when we put on our clean smocks. One day Ernie was walking by in his when a cow “coughed” an’ he got dung all over him, so he hit her with a milking stool. Yes, he certainly was a hard man.
‘But he was a marvellous thatcher of ricks and taught me all there was to know. The secret was to start in the middle and we’d mark it out with sticks. In those days a farmer could eye up a piece of cut corn and estimate the size of the rick very accurately.’
Despite his tough exterior, White was a chapel parson. ‘He used to take me down with him, but after giving the Baptists and Methodists a good try I decided on the church. Most of all, I didn’t like the chapel because White used to stand around for ages afterwards, haggling with all the other farmers over this and that when I wanted to get off home.
‘First thing on Mondays we cleaned out the cattle and fed them. Each cow had its own tin for the feed – cotton-cake and linseed-cake bought in. But I never minded this because straight after we went ferreting for the day – or snaring if wet – on the downs. Ernie slung all the wires around his waist and I carried the pegs and tillers. I made up the snares, handed them to Ernie and he stamped them in. We’d set about 250 in the day between milkings. White would go back on Tuesday morning and often collect about 40-50 rabbits which he’d take to market that day. In the meantime I’d be milking. In winter we set the snares Friday and picked up Saturday as the rabbits kept longer.
‘When Ernie went to market the farm labourers had a good chance to play a trick on him. He used to pay them 2d a tail for moles. Every pay day the tails was tipped out onto the floor and counted. Then Ernie put ‘em in a tin and took ‘em to the dung heap. But as soon as he’d done the men used to fetch some of them out again so they was paid twice.
‘There were lots of English partridges about then, but very few French (the red-legged) because the farmers believed they drove the native birds off, so they tried to get rid of them. There were loads of hares and foxes, too, but very few pheasants. They used to grow mustard as a manure which was ploughed in- the partridges loved it. And every spring we had wonderful carpets of wild flowers, especially violets.
‘White used to sell his shooting, but there were no reared birds. A doctor and two friends took it and come harvest time they asked if they could shoot a few of the rabbits bolting out of the corn as it was cut. White said OK and told us workers to watch it – “Don’t chase ‘em like you usually do.” And of course we didn’t go much on this as the rabbits was our perks. In those days I used to throw father’s old blackthorn shillelagh at rabbits and I had loads with it. So, as soon as the doctor fired the first shot old Bill fell off the binder clutching his ear. Much to our relief, White immediately said that was it – the shooting had to stop.’
Later, Jim became a keen shooter. He has been back with a team of Guns to Home Farm, where he lived as a boy, and they shot 287 hares. ‘But that’s nothing, we’ve killed 420 in a day down here in the valley. The numbers went down when they started using this Paraquat weedkiller.’
When Jim’s family left New Farm to live at Allenford, near the village of Martin, he went to work for Levi Shearing as under-dairyman. Again, it was very hard work, not least because he had to spend a couple of hours a day pumping up enough water for the cattle.
‘At first the rats in the granary there was terrible, so I said to Levi’s sister, Francis, “Look, I’ll see to them for you”. ‘She said she’d give me a packet of Star cigarettes, which then cost 4d for ten. But I said no, I wanted a packet of Players, which cost 1s for 20. A fortnight later she was so desperate she agreed. So Jim Woodford and me went over and we got dozens with Jim’s specially sharpened spike. The poor old ferret was bitten all over. I even took a flat board and knocked ‘em down as they ran up the walls.
‘Francis used to pay us a penny for each duck egg we gathered up from the riverbank. And I made a bit from the rabbits there, too. Levi said I could go for them as long as we split 50-50. So I went on Boxing Day and had eight or more. A dealer came by and we stood out for 1s each. He would have sold them for about 1s 6d a time.’
After two years at Allenford, Jim went to Beaulieu as under-dairyman for a Scot called Malcolm. ‘For some reason he always called me Seamus. I always remember going to the great big cauldron in his kitchen every morning to get some nice warm water to wash the cows down before milking.
‘Malcolm was hit by an old Morris van down at Lepe, in the Forest. He got up, walked round the front of the vehicle and dropped dead. His son took the farm for a while but then sold up and I went to Malcolm’s brother’s.
‘Oh, I nearly forgot; I had 12 months working at a hen battery on a bonus. When I went there the feed troughs were full of stale meal and grit and the water troughs were half full of silt washed off the hens’ bills. And out back if there was one rat there was a hundred. So I said to Mr Towell, “Do you mind if I have a good cleanup?” “Not at all”, he said, “I want the production up”. Immediately I started three feeds a day instead of one, and believe you me the eggs shot up. We had 1,008 birds, all in cages. But there were men on the free range too. I really enjoyed it there.
‘Those old hens was funny things. One day a grass snake came in and really drove ‘em mad. He’d been taking the eggs, which is one of their favourite foods. I watched one eating a frog at Beaulieu once. He slimed all over it first, but what amazed me was the frog made no attempt to escape, even though the two animals were face to face and the snake’s jaws widening. Afterwards, I stamped on the snake’s head and out came the frog. He seemed all right.’
Despite his love of the land, Jim had always been very interested in flying and had wanted to join the Royal Air Force when he left school, but his mother would not give the necessary permission. However, when the prospect of war loomed large, the idea of joining up crossed Jim’s mind again. He had been thinking about it anyway because of the awful way some farmers treated the labourers – even after a lifetime’s loyal service. ‘The last straw came when I went to a dance and saw my girlfriend on someone else’s lap. That was it, I gave Mr Malcolm a month’s notice.
‘Stepfather said, “What do you want to go in?” I said, “The RAF, of course”. He said, “Well, you’d better hurry before they call you up and stick you in the infantry.” So I did, and in 1938 started at Uxbridge. After 58 weeks at Henlow I qualified as an electrician and was later posted to 10 Bomber Gunnery School at Warmwell.
‘My daily inspection only took 30 minutes, so I got cheesed off and learnt to drive a tractor. I became a bowser driver and towed petrol out to the planes. One day I was driving the tractor down one of the very narrow lanes around the camp, which was out on the heath, when this great big car came hurtling towards me. I had no choice but to swerve off the road straight through the hedge, but it was only a bit of blackthorn and I had no worries in the tractor. Out jumped the chauffeur and said, “His Majesty is very sorry but we have to get to London in a hurry”. Turned out it was the King of Norway.’
Even when he was in the RAF, Jim managed to do a spot of rabbiting – poaching really. ‘Every morning at Little Stoughton in Bedfordshire in came the policeman and his chums and if there was a rabbit hanging on the door they’d have it. And sometimes there was a pheasant or two from behind the bomb dump. I got in with the local squire and he let me go on some neighbouring ground in return for repairing some old electrical equipment. He wanted me to take up a job as keeper after the war.’
Jim left the RAF as a sergeant in 1945. ‘I wrote to the Post Office, but they said I would have to start at the bottom and I didn’t want that. Also, I could have gone to a large electrical company, but I didn’t want to travel all the way to Bournemouth every day.’
In 1940 Jim had married Violet, and his diary shows just how much he looked forward to her letters during those seemingly endless postings in the RAF. At first they lived with Violet’s widowed father, but later moved into a council house at New Town, Broad Chalke. ‘They had to put me top of the list’, Violet told me. ‘I was born and bred here – in that thatched cottage just over there. I reckon I know every field in Broad Chalke. I could go out blind and I wouldn’t fall in the bank. I don’t think I’d be happy anywhere else.’
Sadly now crippled by arthritis, 70-year-old Violet is the daughter of a carter, who was in charge of 30 horses. ‘He was a real countryman – used to go by the clouds an’ all.’
To most outsiders, Broad Chalke still appears a pretty, sleepy village where one could retire in peace, but for Violet, who has lived nowhere else, there are regrets. ‘Half these houses used to be full of farm workers, but then came the tractors and they didn’t want the men. After that all the weekenders came in.
‘Another sad thing is how all the flower shows are disappearing. In the old days every village had one. I always used to get and do the teas, but in the end hardly anyone appreciated it; there’s a funny lot of people now. Trouble is, stuff’s got so dear, what with the electric required for bringing the plants on an’ all.’
Not surprisingly, I sense that Violet would rather go back to those idyllic times between the wars. ‘In them days we only used to see one car a week, and that was either the doctor’s or the vicar’s. Dad used to take two-and-a-half hours to go by cart to Salisbury and back. Now its in the car and gone – it’s all too quick out in the country now.
‘When we were kids we used to make tents out of the wheatsheafs. We stacked ‘em up and ‘ad our tea or lunch in ‘em when we took dad’s out to the fields. Everyone had to make their own enjoyment then. Also, every village had its own maypole and May Queen. Now we never seem to get the maypole weather. Take this year: instead of watching everyone dancin’ an’ having fun we was all cussin’ because it was cold as charity.’
At the age of 14 Violet started to work as a housemaid for the Hussey family at 14s a week. ‘They had all that heavy silver and it was my job to clean it. After five years of that I went to Beaulieu and that’s where I met my husband.
‘Out in the field lunch used to be the top of a cottage loaf, cheese and a hunk of butter. We also used to make rook pie with onion and egg and nice thick gravy. There was lovely lambs’-tail pie too, but you can’t make ‘em now because they put those rings round the tails to make ‘em wither away.’
Violet’s continuing love of the Wiltshire countryside was certainly influential in Jim’s life after the war, but it was a fortuitous meeting which provided his next job. He was doing some decorating when he got into conversation with someone from the War Agricultural Executive Committee (WARAG). ‘I was to start that Monday, in pest control, and by golly those pests had bred like mad during the war. Funny thing is, I would have to drive all over the place and the only thing I’d ever been on the road with was a tractor. But there was no driving test then.’
The rabbit was the greatest agricultural pest during the 1940s’ but Jim was also concerned with rats and moles. He earned £4 10s a week, but was allowed to sell the rabbits to butchers for a bonus of 2½d for a large one and ½d for a ‘tiddler’. This was certainly a great incentive because on some days he killed 150. ‘With the head and legs off I used to skin ‘em in 25 seconds. But it wasn’t always easy to get rid of large numbers locally. Once I sold 150 a week to the local hospital, but that was all spoilt by the arrival of cheap Australian and Chinese rabbits. They’re too sweet, you know, nothing like a wild one – rather like the difference in flavour between field and cultivated mushrooms.’
In his first year Jim made £1,000 profit for local farmers in controlling their rabbits. No wonder the WARAG Wiltshire committee described him as ‘a man in a million’.
Jim still has the records which show how many rabbits there were after the war. But there were just as many rats, too. His record day was in January 1947 when he and his mate killed 386 rats at Ford Slaughterhouse, near Salisbury. ‘We pre-baited with sausage rusk on the Monday and Tuesday, and when we went back for the kill on Wednesday the rats was queuing up for more – just like chickens. I thought, “Good God, there’s more rats here than ever Mondays”. I went round to where all the guts were tipped and over the back all the rat runs showed up in the frost, going right away to where they were still thrashing ricks across the field. As the ricks were done the rats were streaming over and all the animal bones were picked absolutely clean.
‘We added our zinc phosphide to the rusk they was so keen on, knowing that we wouldn’t have to wait long the poison causes water on the lungs and the rats more or less drown within a few minutes. But as fast as they died others kept on coming. Never seen anything like it. However, when we went back later it was quiet as a grave. We buried the rats quickly, but later we decided to dig ‘em up again for a photograph.’
Since then Jim has killed many thousands of rats for many people in many different situations, but he has been bitten by one only twice. The first time was when he put his hand in a hole and pulled out three rabbits. ‘I thought I had another, but it turned out to be a damn rat, which bit my finger then ran up my arm and away. So off I went to the doctor. He said, “What do you want?” I told him I needed some treatment, what with the black death an’ all. But he just said, “Don’t be so silly, a human bite’s worse”.
‘The second time was when I thought I saw a rabbit’s foot in a hollow tree. I thought, “I’ll have you”, and grabbed hold as fast as I could. There was a squeal and he bit right down through my nail and thumb.’
A SHREWD OBSERVER
A Mole-Catcher, Miss Mitford has said, ‘is of the earth, earthy’; but he is of the green fields, of the solitary woodlands. We observe him, especially in the spring and the autumn, a silent and picturesque object, poring under hedges and along the skirts of the forest, or the margin of a stream, for traces of the little black-a-moor pioneer Grubbing his way in darkness drear.
We have met him in copses and hazel-shaded lanes, cutting springs for his traps; and we not only love him, and look upon him as one of the legitimate objects of rural scenery, but have often found him a quiet but shrewd observer of nature, and capable of enriching us with many fragments of knowledge. In the winter by the fire he makes his traps. These are very simple machines, which almost any one may construct. We have made and set many a one ourselves, and have been up by the earliest dawn of day to discover their success. Many moles may be caught in one place, if the trap be judiciously set in a main burrow. It is better near a hedge, or in a plantation, than in the middle of a field, where it is liable to be disturbed by cattle. A strong hazel stick for the spring, two pieces of brass wire, a little string; a few hooked pegs, and a top made of the half of a piece of willow pole, about 6 inches long and 3 in diameter, hollowed out, are all the requisites for a mole-trap.
WILLIAM HOWITT
Book of the Seasons, 1830
On another occasion Jim was bitten by a fox. One was required for a foxhunt, so Jim’s expert services were called upon. Eventually, the dogs marked one to ground, but it was in a hole which had been squashed by a passing tank, so it had to lie on its side. ‘Because of this I had to grab him by the side of the neck instead of the back. My mate said, “He’s going to bite you”, and with that the bugger screwed his head round and bit my arm. Well, my fingers stood right out and I dropped him immediately, but I managed to catch him between my knees and without further fuss we popped him in the sack. Funny thing is, after all that bother, when he was released some miles away he managed to run all the way back home.’
Very many years later, Jim could still take you to where this and many other little incidents happened. For example, there was the time in about 1950, when he put down good hay for the rabbits in deep snow. ‘Would you believe it, they ignored it and preferred to dig down for roots. But I still know exactly where that was because the seed from the hay rooted and you can still recognise the patch.’
Rabbits were very much Jim’s main source of income for many years. After working for WARAG, he went into partnership with the man who used to buy most of his catch. ‘C.A. (Dick) Nunn was a real character, Jimmy Edwards’ double, and we employed 11 trappers.’ During that time Jim and a lad once caught 2,040 rabbits in one week, 425 of them on a single day. ‘That was my best ever and I put it down to the snow. They knew it was coming all right and was all out and about to fill their bellies – that’s when we caught ‘em.’
Such quantities of rabbits could not all be disposed of locally so Dick and Jim used to take them up to Smithfield Market, in London. ‘The first time I went there I had about 250 aboard the one-tonner and as soon as I arrived I started to unload ‘em. But that was the worst thing I could have done – I was breaking the rules and the porters wouldn’t touch them; they were a rough old lot. So I had to drive all the way back with ‘em, and it was a long old drag up there then.’
But those days of rabbit superabundance were not to last; with the introduction of myxomatosis in the early 1950s the population was almost wiped out, and with it went Jim’s living. But ever resourceful, he immediately rang six farmers in the district and was promised six contracts for rat extermination, worth £160 per annum – ‘not bad in those days.
‘My partner went off and bought a pig farm. He was a real nutcase. Once he blew up some badgers with a tubful of carbide. Unfortunately, the fuse went out so he took back a turf at the sett, stepped back and fired his Very pistol into the hole. My God, there was such an almighty explosion he singed his eyebrows and he half-disappeared when all the ground around him collapsed. He never did see any of the badgers. But they really did play havoc with the rabbits.
‘After that I started to get my own rabbit-control contracts as well. At one time I had 90,000 acres, including Porton Down, where the Government had their biological research establishment. Some of the areas up there were fenced in – and still are – but I always thought it funny that the rabbits could wander in and out of some no-go areas even though they could catch anthrax and everything.’
Apart from rabbits and rats, Jim’s pest-control work has also involved a variety of ‘bugs’. Among his most memorable experiences was when he was called to Wroughton Hospital, at Swindon, to deal with an infestation of cockroaches. ‘I started in the morning in number 1 kitchen, and when I got to the top – number 19 kitchen – in the afternoon the cook there said: “I knew you were coming at l0 am because they were coming up the pipes in troops”.’
On another cockroach occasion Jim went to the officers’ mess at Old Sarum. ‘I walked the kitchen at night when all was quiet and followed ‘em back to base like a regiment of ants. There were masses of ‘em and I tracked ‘em down to a crockery store, where I sprayed with Lindane pyrethrum, which lasts for about three months. The kitchen staff used to sweep up the bodies by the shovelful.’
Over many summers Jim has dealt with hundreds of wasps’ nests, but has only ever been stung twice. Like all good pest controllers he will not kill bees, but he has been called to move them on. ‘The best way is to put old oil or strong disinfectant underneath them – that’s usually enough.’
In carrying out his work Jim has rarely been questioned. But one incident brought a smile to his face as he told me about it. ‘I used to do regular work for Lady Essex. One day she asked me how it was that I kept going there to put poison down but they never saw any rats. So I was really cross and said, “OK, I’ll see to that”. When I next had a load of bodies I put ‘em in a sack and took ‘em to her door. When she was summoned I tipped ‘em out all over the ground. She screamed and was gone. I was never questioned again.
‘Some fifteen years later, I offered to cut her grass, but she was divorced and struggling then, so she said only if the price was right. I remember it well, because afterwards she gave me tea and it was so awful I had to pour it into a flower pot when she wasn’t looking. She really was a strange person – used to wander around barefoot in the nettles collecting apples.’
THE PET TOAD
I have been informed, from undoubted authority, that some ladies took a fancy to a toad, which they nourished summer after summer, with the maggots which turn to flesh flies. The reptile used to come forth every evening from an hole under the garden-steps; and was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed. But at last a tame raven gave him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one eye. After this accident the creature languished for some time and died.
GILBERT WHITE
Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, 1789
But even if they were eccentric, few people would ever dare to question Jim’s knowledge of moles. During a lifetime’s trapping he has found their numbers to be surprisingly steady, with only little ups and downs and no clear trends. ‘But strangely, on some days almost entirely bucks or bitches are caught.’
In recent years, Jim has received between l0p and 20p each for mole-skins, but moles are rarely caught just for their skins. Jim is paid by the hour or by contract and, operating alone, he can easily undercut the often excessive fees of big pest-control firms, yet still make a good living.
Jim started to trap before World War II and has been called upon to clear some pieces of ground many times over. As I walked with him along the River Avon in the Woodford Valley, on Lord Chichester’s estate, he told me: ‘If I wiped out every mole here others would come back through the same runs within ten years’.
Although he also deals with infestations in public playing-fields and gardens, Jim works mainly for farmers. The mole is unwanted by them for a variety of reasons: by tunnelling beneath seed-drill lines in search of the insect larvae that attack seeds, subsequent wilting and destruction of young plants may result; the mole-hills cover valuable pasture or hay; it throws up stones which may damage valuable cutting machinery; soil fouling silage may lead to harmful fermentation, and mole-hills serve as seed-beds for vigorous colonising weeds. On the other hand, the mole’s effect on worm numbers is not thought to be significant and its deep tunnelling in damp ground probably improves the drainage.
On the thin soil of the chalk hills around Salisbury, the shallow mole runs are readily detected and the galvanised spring traps are easily set in them. ‘I wouldn’t hang up a new one, but bury it in the soil ready for use’, Jim told me, referring to the mole’s sense of smell. ‘And after you set each trap you must carefully replace the turf or soil over it, for if they see the light they will bung up the run and not use it.’
It is easy to see if a trap has been sprung because the spring pokes through the earth. As we checked a line, Jim said: ‘Look, this old trap is sprung but there is nothing in there as it is open to the full extent’. It was an old open-ended trap that Jim had dug up over 40 years ago and he believes it to be over 100 years old. ‘They’ve lost the art of making them now.’
Over the years, Jim has trapped by accident ‘many voles, a few weasels, one grass snake and a woppin’ great lobworm’. Replacing a trap, he paused to tell me how important it is to press down the bottom of the run again to make it as shiny as it is when the moles run up and down. ‘They travel a tidy old distance in a day, but they always go back to a bank where it is drier.’
I asked Jim if it is essential to wear gloves to avoid leaving human scent. ‘Well … yes, but it’s mainly to keep the dirt off’, he said with a grin. Then he cursed for he had forgotten to bring up a mole from another colony to mix the scent. ‘They don’t like that – soon smell ‘e and get in my trap.’ In fact, each animal is usually the sole occupant of a tunnel system, but there is some sharing with subordinates coming out when the dominant mole is at rest.
Moles are active day and night, with periods of almost continuous activity lasting some 4½ hours, alternating with periods of about 3½ hours rest in the nest. Jim has found them to be ‘specially active one hour after dawn, at midday and teatime’. There is slightly more activity during daylight.
We moved on steadily with Jim’s arthritic knee becoming rather troublesome on a very steep hill over which late snow-clouds swooped but passed intact. With 20 miles to walk on a long day, going around the traps six times when they are working well, and mostly seven days a week between November and March, Jim is indeed a dedicated character. With 50 traps he will catch about 60 moles in 20 hours work.
Jim also poisons moles with strychnine, which he obtains from a chemist, but only under licence from the Ministry of Agriculture. Furthermore, the poison must not be used on non-agricultural land without prior approval of the Ministry’s divisional executive officer. Given the choice, Jim would always use poison in preference to traps whenever he can get the bait worms – he uses 10-121b in one day! The worms are soaked in a strychnine solution for at least six hours and then two or three are dropped at suitable points in the runs, which are detected with a moling bar. Here the use of tweezers and gloves is essential. Afterwards, each hole is carefully blocked over with a small stone and the turf and earth replaced. That is the end of it. The poisoned moles are never recovered.
I tackled Jim about secondary poisoning in the food chain. He assured me: ‘In 60 years poisoning I have never found a poisoned mole on top of the ground and I have never had a fatality involving another wild creature or domesticated animal or bird. However, moles are cannibalistic and it is not unusual for one to eat the body of another that has been poisoned.’
Jim has found that strychnine will kill a healthy mole within a minute, but is even quicker if the animal has a cut on its mouth. He emphasises the importance of giving enough bait, for he would hate to think of a part-poisoned mole. Any poisoned worms not eaten simply dissolve into the ground after about forty-eight hours.
Between April and October Jim traps only at weekends, for then he concentrates on gardening jobs, which is just as well because the moles go deeper in the drier months and the winter skins are the best. There are three moults – one in the spring, with the males almost a month later than the females; a second between July and September (which may not be completed), and a third between October and December. These are concurrent in all age groups and both sexes. Jim told me that ‘when they shed their winter fur it can be plucked quite easily’. One strange phenomenon that he has noticed but does not know the reason for is that ‘The buck often has the fur pulled out of his chest when caught in the mating season’. Perhaps this is the result of males fighting.
‘The skins should be removed and pegged out within twelve hours and stretched to 4 × 5in or 4½ × 4½in.’
You can delve into the most authoritative textbooks for a host of mole facts and figures, but only long and acute observation by a true countryman such as Jim will yield those fascinating extra comments such as ‘the little bitches do all the work’ and ‘you often find a main run where they come down to drink. A river is no barrier, for not only will the mole tunnel under the river bed, but also it is a good swimmer, using all four limbs.
‘See the roots growing up through this heap’, said Jim. ‘This is an old, stale run and it is not worth setting a trap here.’ The deeper runs obviously need more careful detection and, apart from some which had been trodden in by livestock, I simply could not see what Jim could, through the discerning eyes of experience.
Without pausing in his labours, Jim besieged me with a variety of further information about moles and other wildlife such as: ‘A fox will dig out a dead mole and roll on ‘im you know.’ Actually, the mole is not a great source of food for predators, but during the dispersal of young from the nest, the tawny owl and other birds of prey account for many.
After mating between March and May, the mole usually has one litter of three or four in May or June, but Jim has occasionally recorded five. Although the sex ratio is approximately 1:1, ‘the males are generally more trappable and particularly in the breeding season when they may outnumber the females by 3:1 in a trapping catch’.
Although it was still early in the year, Jim was able to show me a few of the larger nursery mounds, which are also known as fortresses. These are of a more permanent nature and are likely to occur where there is a bad infestation, which Jim believes ‘is best dealt with quickly by laying traps or poison around the perimeter of the field’.
It is strange how some people begin to behave and almost look like their pets and favourite animals, yet Jim Scard certainly does not remind me of a mole. However, in watching him operate it almost seems that he has acquired some of the mole’s amazing detection methods. While the mole’s hearing and smell are only moderate and its eyes barely functional, it does have highly developed tactile sense organs that help to locate worms which, Jim assures me, ‘they clean with their front limbs as they eat them’. Short vibrissae on the muzzle are associated with specialised sensory receptors and hairs on the tail tip are also sensory. The tail is carried vertically.
But despite his preoccupation with moles and other pests, Jim has always found time to develop other interests. One of his great loves is singing. ‘I first sang in a choir at Martin village, where the old schoolmaster taught me to harmonise, and at school I was always called on to sing the first verse of every hymn. I used to do a duet with a girl, but she couldn’t bear to face the class so she turned to the wall while I faced the others.’
Nowadays Jim still sings in the choir at Bower Chalke and Broad Chalke and is one of the 45 Bower Chalke Valley Singers, run by Mrs Hornby, wife of ex-Halifax Building Society chairman Richard Hornby, who lives at Bower Chalke in the house where William Golding – author of Lord of the Flies and other novels – used to live. Jim told me: ‘Bill Golding became very successful rather late in life and always wanted everything instant, so when he decided he wanted two oaks for the garden it was not surprising that he wanted big ones. No acorns for him. He ordered them from Hillier’s and I had to dig the holes – 6ft deep and 4ft across!
‘I was there all day. Eventually Bill came out and asked how things were going. I said all right, but I’d better go soon as the moon was coming out. He said, “You’d better have some cool refreshment”, so he disappeared into the house and soon came back with a great big tumbler of whisky – and then another. With that inside me I just kept on digging and ended up so deep I couldn’t get out. Luckily, my wife rang up to find out where I was and Bill came out to find out what’s what. Laugh … he had to fetch me a short ladder. I couldn’t get out anyway because I was just about legless. Goodness knows how I managed to get home!’
Gardening has always played a very important part in the lives of Jim and Violet Scard, both professionally and for recreation. Even now Jim refuses to let the grass grow under his feet and any time you call he is likely to be out tending his plot or someone else’s. ‘Just look at this soil’, he said to me on a recent visit. ‘Dry as a chip already and there’s certain to be another hosepipe ban.’
Among Jim’s multitude of cups and certificates for prize-winning vegetables and flowers are a number for leeks, the growing of which he takes very seriously. ‘Always make sure the earth is a quarter inch below the bottom two leaves. ‘Always keep hoeing – just tickling up – and always keep the white covered. Also, try to avoid watering ‘em from the top. It’s disastrous if the water only goes halfway down as then the roots start to come up to reach the water. If you must water, then make sure you give a good drowning.’
Despite the rivalry, Jim has managed to retain a keen sense of humour about the vegetable plot. ‘Not so long ago a local newspaper reporter came out to see me and said, “I hear you’re the leek grower; I suppose you’ll never be beaten”. I said I dare say I will, but when he came to write it up he put that I said I would never be beaten. Do you know, in the very next show I only got second, yet there was no doubting my leeks was best. I suppose when they all saw the newspaper report they got together and said we’ll stop his bragging.’
Jim’s interest in gardening has resulted in his being co-opted onto the local flower show committee (for which he was chairman for ten years). ‘In any village if you do something you soon get known and roped in. Before I knew it, I was secretary and then chairman of the parish council. But the council doesn’t have much real power you know. I packed it in about ten years ago. Oh yes, I was also secretary of the hall committee for two years.’ And as if all this wasn’t enough, Jim managed to do 26 years voluntary service for the Royal Observer Corps, ‘first plotting aircraft and later fall-out – all simulated of course’.
PEST CONTROL TODAY
Molehills everywhere from lawns to graveyards are a continuing annoyance, and now the use of strychnine has been banned, trapping remains the only realistic option for dealing with them. Traditionalists still favour the barrel trap method of mole catching, although the barrels are now usually made of metal rather than wood. Experts prefer these, or scissor-style traps, rather than sonic devices which serve only to repel moles and induce them to move from one site to another. To find a trained molecatcher in your area – or to find out how to become one – click onto www.britishmolecatchers.co.uk. Gardeners remain even less enamoured of rabbits, which can decimate vegetable crops in a matter of hours. Rather than killing them, rabbit-proof fencing has become the preferred method of control, although in the country the gun and ferret will still do the job in the age-old way.
Rats, too, are a continuing menace all over Britain, especially in cities. According to a recent report, there are an estimated 80 million brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) in the UK, making an average of some 1.3 rats per person, up by 39 per cent since 2000. And, thanks to council cuts in bin collections, poor sewage maintenance and flooding, their numbers are rising. There are many ways of catching rats, varying from traps to poisons, but to be effective, extermination remains a job for the expert rather than the amateur. The British Pest Control Association (www.bpca.org.uk) is an excellent source of information and training on all aspects of controlling pests safely, efficiently and within the law.
Now in his late seventies, Jim is supposed to be winding down, but he is a restless soul and his remains a working house, with few frills inside. It’s as if all the love has gone on the garden. Inside, heaps of old accounts and other papers and bits and pieces burst from every drawer and adorn every ledge. The couple have six daughters and a son, but they are now all grown up and setting roots in other parts of the country. Yet young Jim is following in his father’s footsteps and already giving the moles and rabbits of Wiltshire a tough time.
Nowadays, pinned down by the scourge of arthritis, Violet Scard spends much of her time sitting quietly by a coal fire. But she is never alone. A cockatiel calls incessantly from a large cage in the corner and only feet from the window finches, tits and nuthatches come for the food which Jim constantly supplies. It is a fitting place to reflect on village and country life. ‘When we first came to this house we used to lie in bed at four in the morning and listen to a tremendous sound from all the songbirds. Now it’s a bit different – there just aren’t the numbers. But you can always bet that a cuckoo will come here on 19 April. Then he’ll be quiet for a few days before you hear him again.’
Despite their years and life of hardship, Jim and Violet remain a cheerful and active couple. Jim still swings his old Volvo estate about the narrow lanes with all the quick-wittedness of that young tractor driver who once swerved to miss the King of Norway. In the front garden is the hulk of another Volvo estate, which burnt out when he was doing topiary work for pop star Toyah Wilcox. ‘The tailgate light shorted and the fire gutted the back of the car. But the engine was still running so we brought it back here and I’ve been using it for spares as well as a store.’ How typical of Jim that nothing should go to waste.
Sadly, Jim Scard died in August 1995.