A system of cords passes high in the air from the jerking pole at
the stream to other slender, jerked poles among the sementeras. From
these poles a low jerking line runs over the sementeras, over which
are stretched at right angles parallel cords within a few feet of the
fruit heads. These parallel cords are also jerked, and their movement,
together with that of the leaves depending from them, is sufficient
to keep the birds away. One such machine may send its shock a quarter
of a mile and trouble the birds over an area half an acre in extent.
Other Igorot, as those of the upper Abra River in Lepanto Province,
employ this same jerking machine to produce a sharp, clicking sound in
the sementera. The jerking cord repeatedly raises a series of hanging,
vertical wooden fingers, which, on being released, fall against a
stationary, horizontal bamboo tube, producing the sharp click. These
clicking machines are set up on two supporting sticks a few feet
above the grain every three or four yards about the sementeras.
There are many rodents, rats and mice, which destroy the growing grain
during the night unless great care is taken to cheek them. The Igorot
makes a small dead fall which he places in the path surrounding the
sementera.
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