A weasel in the white winter coat was used by Audubon and Bachman (1856:177, Quarto edit.) to drive rabbits out of their burrows in the same fashion that ferrets commonly are used. Although these naturalists refer to their animal as an ermine it probably was Mustela frenata noveboracensis, the long-tailed weasel. The animal's teeth (probably canines) were blunted and a long cord tied on its neck. With the aid of this weasel 12 rabbits were caught in one morning and more than 50 in four weeks.
Enemies
Little is recorded concerning enemies of weasels and it may be that other vertebrates are not an important factor in removing the annual increase. Errington (1935:195-198), in Iowa, found four, putrid weasels about dens of red foxes, Vulpes fulvus. No remains of weasels were found in the feces of the foxes and it appears that the foxes do not eat the weasels. The label on an adult female specimen of M. f. spadix from Boone County, Iowa, bears the date May 10, 1938, and the annotation, by T. G. Scott, "fox-killed." Bailey (1931:328) recounts that "Weller saw a coyote carrying one in its mouth" at an elevation of 11,500 feet in the Pecos Mountains of New Mexico. The type specimen, a young female, of M. f. peninsulae from Hudsons, Florida, according to Rhoads (1894:155) ". . . was caught in the woods by a cat." Barber and Cockerell (1898:189) mention one that was killed by a dog in Mesilla Park, New Mexico. Moore (1945:258) records the death of a weasel in Florida. Circumstantial evidence indicated that it was killed by the bite of a water moccasin. In the Biological Surveys Collection of mammals in the United States National Museum, the label with the skull of an adult male weasel, No. 160663, from Banning, California, carries the information that the skull was taken from the stomach of a Crotalus (rattlesnake).
In reporting on a study of owl predation in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, Pearson and Pearson (1947:143) mention that "weasels are found throughout the county but . . . were never eaten by the owls."
The Uinta spermophile at some places and times probably is a prey sought by the long-tailed weasel but Warren (1924:265) records Citellus armatus repeatedly chasing weasels in August, at Camp Roosevelt, Yellowstone National Park, and how the ground squirrels at one time ignored the weasel even when it came within a few inches of a squirrel.
Warren (1932:71), on August 2, 1931, at Grand Mesa, Colorado, obtained a large male weasel with two porcupine quills in it; one was near the mouth and another "in the skull." Osgood (1935:156) writes that near Rutland, Vermont, a male weasel "taken in April, was heavily parasitized and had several short porcupine quills embedded in its neck, head, and shoulders." The remainder of Osgood's account implies that the weasel may have turned to porcupine because the normal food for weasels was scarce at the time. Porcupine quills, then, are a hazard for weasels although it is unlikely that the porcupine is ever to be classed as an enemy of the weasel.
An accident of another sort, which must at the very least have been annoying to the weasel that suffered it, was recorded by Soper (1921:37). The animal had a stick lodged crosswise between the fourth upper premolar teeth.
The recorded actions of several kinds of animals which are too small to be dangerous to the weasel suggest that they recognize that the weasel is a danger to them. Borell and Ellis (1934:21) mention that a weasel in Nevada caused a great disturbance among the chipmunks. Long (1938:250) heard pikas give evidence of terror by a peculiar cry when a weasel was in a rock slide occupied by the pikas. Seton (1929 (2):629) writes "On June 14, 1915, as I prowled around the south side of the lake on my homeland at Greenwich, Conn., my attention was called to a pair of song sparrows and a male towhee that were noisily mobbing a Weasel, twittering around and darting at him, as though they knew full well his evil ways. The weasel paid little heed, but soon dived from sight in a stone wall."