The Way of a Weasel

A S I was hurrying down the path past my neighbor's summer lodge, "Slabsides," at the edge of the rocky woods, this morning, I heard a commotion in the brush, and an instant later saw rushing across the road ahead of me a pullet closely followed by a weasel, the latter going very easily as compared with the chicken's frantic haste.

My neighbor happened to be standing by his doorstep, and, running forward to meet the pair, stamped his foot on the weasel just an instant after it had leaped upon the hen, whose gray feathers were already flying. The marauder's first stroke had had almost the deadly effect of a charge of shot, and although the pullet struggled away into the shelter of some vines (not thinking of coming to us for protection), I suspect she never got well.

Reaching down, my neighbor released and lifted the weasel by the nape of the neck, and held him out at arm's length between his thumb and finger—an image of impotent rage. His head was like a round wedge, his ears lay flat back, his round black eyes glowed like jet, and the white, long-whiskered lips, flecked with blood, were drawn back from a jagged row of needle-pointed teeth, ivory-white, in a snarl that portrayed a prisoner caught but not conquered. He writhed and squirmed in the man's firm grasp, trying his best to get his teeth into the detaining fingers, and did succeed in scratching them with the nails of a paw already red with the blood of the wounded pullet.

It would be hard to make a finer picture of baffled fury than that little carnivore presented. He knew he was doomed, for he remembered other chickens he had caught and killed; and if he had acted like a coward he would simply have been drowned in the horse-trough or had his brains dashed out on a rock. But his bold spirit against overwhelming odds—his unquenchable courage—won him a nobler fate; and calling his dog my friend gave the bandit a chance for a hero's victory or death in honorable battle.

The little weasel, not one-twentieth the weight of the terrier, accepted the challenge without a breath of hesitation. The instant he was thrown down before the dog, he faced the foe with fur on end, feet braced and jaws wide open—never a thought of running away in his plucky heart.

The terrier rushed in only to have the weasel leap straight at his open mouth and fasten its teeth in his nose. This was disconcerting, and the dog squealed with surprise and pain; but he also was courageous, and, shaking off his tormentor, seized it again, only to have it wriggle a second time out of his jaws and make a valiant effort to escape from this unequal contest. The dog darted after it and got a fresh hold, but so did his undaunted and pertinacious foe, and Nip had to whirl the weasel round and round his head, while it hung to his torn lip by its teeth, before he could shake it loose and a third time seize its body in an effective grip. Even when, crushed at last under major force, the weasel lay at the point of death among the bruised and bloody weeds, an indomitable spirit still glared from the black eyes, the sharp teeth were bared as defiantly as ever in the face of his big conqueror, and it died like a hero.

These weasels, which are substantially the same as the European stoats, whose coats, turning white (except the black tail-tip) in winter, in northern countries, give us the "ermine" of the furriers, are one of the few kinds of wild quadrupeds which seem not only to maintain themselves against civilization, but actually to profit by it. This they can do because of their small size, their clever wits, developed by a life of constant cunning, their hardihood and fearlessness.

Finding some cranny to their liking among the rocks or within an old stone wall, a weasel family will furnish it with bedding of dried grass and make a home as snug as it is secure. An exceedingly narrow doorway will serve them, for their loose and lithe bodies can creep through a very small and tortuous aperture, which may be defended against any enemy unable to tear the place apart. A snake, indeed, is the only hostile thing (except another weasel) that can get into such an intricate den. I believe a weasel would not hesitate an instant in attacking it if it came; and I guess he would overcome the worst snake of our woods. I have never seen a battle between a serpent and an ermine, but I have no doubt the mammal, small as he is, could avoid the reptile's fangs by his leaping agility—for he is acrobat and contortionist in one—and destroy it by his lancet-like teeth.

By the same token, as Irishmen say, the animal is able to follow the mice and other of its lesser prey along their runways, and into their narrow and winding burrows and hiding-places, careless of depth, or darkness or danger.

It is characteristic of so courageous a creature that it should be a faithful ally. A pair will stand affectionately and nobly by each other in danger, and a weasel mother will defend her young to the last gasp. I once met in the spring, in the woods, a family of minks—only another sort of weasel—consisting of a mother and four little ones, perhaps a quarter grown. In the first surprise the mother darted under a rock, whining a danger-signal to her children, one of which I knocked on the head to add as an instructive specimen to my collection of skins; while the others, too young to understand their danger, dodged about among the leaves.

The instant I stooped to pick up the dead kitten the mother rushed at my hand, and I had to draw back quickly to escape her. She stopped at my feet and sat up on her haunches, her lips drawn back, her eyes gleaming, and every hair on end, whining and daring me to come on. I stood perfectly still, and in a minute she dropped down on all fours, and, always keeping her eye upon me—a giant to her apprehensive view—coolly began to collect her babies, and carry them off, one by one, in her mouth, to a place of safety under a rock, where perhaps was their home. A lion could not have shown more clean courage and indifference to danger than that small mink mother.

A relative of mine, a preacher and truthful, relates that he was sitting in an upper room of his house at Easthampton, Mass., one afternoon, when he saw a weasel come up the stairs, enter the room and saunter about, examining everything within reach of his nose, including the parson's square-toed boots, with careful attention. Having completed this survey, it quietly withdrew, pattered softly down stairs, and the dominie went on with his sermon. Whether his visitor also went to hear the sermon, I do not know; and it is a pity, for then perhaps we should learn whether it really were possible to "catch a weasel asleep."

Ferocity marks all that the weasel does. He constantly kills more than he can eat, seemingly just for the joy of seizing and killing, and a pair that make their residence near a poultry-yard will destroy the flock in a short time if not prevented. They are the terror of the wild birds—one of the worst of their daylight foes, especially for the ground-keeping birds; and here again they arouse the anger of the sportsman, whose wild poultry, the quails and grouse and woodcock, they kill before he himself can get a chance to do so with his gun. I have known one recently to conquer a half-grown house-cat.

Thus, between their coveting the value of his fur and their vexation at his depredations upon the farmyard and the game-preserve, most men are at enmity with the weasel and compel him to be on his guard whenever he goes abroad. Yet so secretive and sly is he, so exceedingly alert, quick, and courageous, that he maintains himself in great numbers everywhere outside of towns; and even in large villages you may find his tracks on the snow on winter mornings,—"a chain that is blown away by the wind and melted by the sun, links with pairs of parallel dots the gaps of farm fences, and winds through and along walls and zigzag lines of rails," as Rowland Robinson says.

Civilization, indeed, has helped rather than hurt him and his tribe. His food does not consist altogether, or perhaps mainly, of birds, but even if it did he would be benefited by the human clearing and cultivation of the wilderness, because these bring about a multiplication of the total number of birds in a locality, in spite of the fact that a few species are lessened or extinguished. But man's operations also tend to increase the total of small mammals, such as rabbits, gophers, squirrels, and mice, upon all of which the weasel preys with avidity, and none of which can wholly escape him, for he can race the swiftest of them with success, can pursue the squirrels to the topmost tree-boughs, though he dare not follow them in lofty jumping, and can chase into their utmost burrows those creatures that seek safety in holes or by digging. Of mice he kills hundreds in the course of a year, no doubt, and thus repays the husbandman for the chickens and ducks he steals, and he will clear a barn of rats in a short time. The chipmunk is a tidbit he is extremely fond of, and probably more of these pretty ground-squirrels fall beneath his teeth than in any other single way.

Of what, indeed, is this bold little carnivore afraid?—for fear may honorably quicken the beating of a heart where cowardice finds no residence.

In the New England, or Middle States, almost nothing exists to alarm him, except man and his guns, dogs, and traps. Where wildcats range the woods, he no doubt falls into their grasp now and then, and then sells his life as dearly as possible; and that he would "die game" even within the jaws of a wolf one may be sure who has seen his sturdy, undaunted struggle with a dog. I have read and have seen pictured accounts of birds of prey having seized weasels of one kind or another that in turn fastened upon the bird's throat or body, and so were carried up into the air until they had gnawed the bird's life away, and both came tumbling to earth locked in mutual murder. It is quite possible something of this sort may occasionally happen, but I have never seen it, nor can I find any evidence of a predatory bird in this country ever having seized a weasel, even by mistake, for something easier to handle.

This animal's endowment of especial valor seems, therefore, superlative, and tending to needless slaughter and cruelty in nature. But this quality is probably an inheritance from the distant past, when the race of weasels dwelt in the midst of a world of fighting against conditions and enemies which they have survived by means of these very virtues; and it may be that here, as sometimes happens elsewhere, virtues have changed into vices through change of exterior circumstances.

Yet this leads us into what is really a wrong and illogical position, for what we are calling vices, namely, the weasel's acts of rapacity and unnecessary slaughter, are only so from our point of view and in his relation to us.

Apart from the fact that the excessive slaughter of which we call him "guilty" may have a beneficent purpose and effect in keeping down the too rapid multiplication of mice and other noxious pests whose other natural enemies have been unduly diminished in cultivated regions, it must be remembered that he is doing only what it is the business and need of his life to do; and that we hate him principally because he becomes a rival and interferes with our own plans in the same direction. Hence the vengeful spirit in which my farmer-friend this morning damned him and hurled him down before his dog was as illogical as it was unkind.

On the whole, philosophically considered, the difference between the weasel's acts and our own cannot be regarded as really great—at any rate to the victims!