The Western Comrade, v. 2, no. 6/7 - Marxist History.org

32 The Western Comrade
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Tahitians Are Wonderfully Natural and Graceful Dancers
American vice-consul at Tahiti, owns an island, Te-
tuaroa, a few miles from Tahiti, and has planted 90,000
coeoanut trees on it. He was much troubled by rats,
who ate the young shoots of the trees and prevented
the nuts from reaching their growth. A coeoanut tree
should bear from 60 to 100 nuts a year, worth a cent
and a half or two cents each. Dr. Williams baited
traps and set out Rough-on-Rats to stop his losses-
but to little purpose. The rats learned to know that
traps were inhospitable, and that poison disagreed
with their health-
I One
day someone suggested cats. Of course, it
was an old maid. AVho else? She said that in Cali-
fornia cats were the devil on gophers, and that they
should do deadly work on Tetuaroa. The doctor
bought cats. While he was about it he bought enough.
Cats were swarming in certain districts of Tahiti,
and when he offered a franc a piece, two whole dimes,
every Tahitian kid l)rouglit a cat or two. When he
had a thousand he cried "Scat!" to the next boy, put
them on a schooner and shipped them to Tetuaroa.
Rat meat was cat meat for tnonths. The cats
chased the rats up trees and into caves. Never was
such a cat-and-rat time. But the day came when the
last rat, the tiniest mouse, had perished by the dread-
ful cataclysm that had overtaken their race.
Tetuaroa is an atoll- It is a coral islet, and the
soil is coral dust-, It has no population except the
few natives sent there by Consul Williams to plant
and gather cocoanuts. There is no ploughing nor
cultivating, for cocoanuts grow without man's aid.
The natives live on fish they catch, and on taro and
feis sent from Tahiti. But they could not catch enough
fish for a thousand cats, and besides with the rats
gone, why support in idleness these meowing myriads?
Worse than that ! This rattling home for cats
had not been a Tomless Eden. The cats had multi-
j)lied. Nature had taken its arithmetical course. It
looked very black for the feline families.
But right here, atavism, heredity, survival of the
fittest—whatever you may call it—intervened. Time
was when cats or their ancestors gained their living
by fishing, as other felines do today. Instead of perish-
ing for lack of rats, some wise old cat, courageously
overcoming his fear of water, went to fishing.
Soon hundreds of cats spent their many hours a