The young animals
are rather insipid, the old males tough, but the mature females are
excellent--the flesh being tender, exceedingly white, fragrant to the
nostrils, and with a very delicate game-flavour.
Within the last ten years so much new land has been brought under
cultivation that farmers have been compelled to destroy incredible
numbers of vizcachas: many large "estancieros" (cattle-breeders) have
followed the example set by the grain-growers, and have had them
exterminated on their estates. Now all that Azara, on hearsay, tells
about the vizcachas perishing in their burrows, when these are covered
up, but that they can support life thus buried for a period of ten or
twelve days, and that during that time animals will come from other
villages and disinter them, unless frightened off with dogs, is strictly
true. Country workmen are so well acquainted with these facts that they
frequently undertake to destroy all the vizcacheras on an estate for so
paltry a sum as ten-pence in English money for each one, and yet will
make double the money at this work than they can at any other. By day
they partly open up, then cover up the burrows with a great quantity of
earth, and by night go round with dogs to drive away the vizcachas from
the still open burrows that come to dig out their buried friends. After
all the vizcacheras on an estate have been thus served, the workmen are
usually bound by previous agreement to keep guard over them for a space
of eight or ten days before they receive their hire: for the animals
covered up are then supposed to be all dead.
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