Now, when I come to think of it I am always reminded of a middle-aged, corpulent gentleman who once came to our tile yard. After he had his wagon loaded he climbed down over the wheel; as he struck the earth, he took both hands and pulled his loose trousers up over the dome of his constitution; then pushing his right hand down into his pants pocket he pulled it out full of what looked to be tobacco, Canada thistles and milk-weed chaff; after pouring this from one hand to the other and blowing the coarse gravel out, he tipped his mouth on top of his face, and raising his hand above, he let this junk roll into the cavity, just like throwing garbage into a skunk-hole. Then he turned and said, “Mr. Miner, do you know Mr. ——?” calling his neighbor by name. “Yes,” I replied, “I am well acquainted with him.” “Well,” he said, as he raised one hand and came towards me, “that is just where you are mistaken. Now, Mr. Miner, you think you know him, but you don’t.” Then raising both hands, he continued, “Now let me tell you who he is, Mr. Miner. He is a limb of the devil,” and he continued coming closer and going from bad to worse, saying nasty, unclean things about his neighbor until this combination in his mouth was all churned into a dirty froth, with the over-splush slopping out the corners and running down his chin like tar boiling out of a hotbox on a manure-spreader. So I excused myself: The engine in the factory needed my attention.
So now, whenever I think of this man’s conversation, I always think of the weasel, as I was sure I knew him. To prove I didn’t, the third year I raised pheasants, these innocent-looking little vermin took over two-thirds of what were hatched. You talk about worms bothering the farmers’ crops; they weren’t in it. Really, these weasels bothered me more than the heavy mortgage that held my buildings down and took care of my insurance policy.
I watched them day and night. I shut the birds in so tight that they smothered in their pens, and yet the weasels got them. I sat on the fence and blew several into fragments with a load of shot, and would go to the house quite light-hearted; next morning likely I would find ten or fifteen more dead pheasants. I put traps everywhere and caught as many pheasants as weasels. I used all kinds of bait, and failed. I tried to call them, but no, no. I took young, live birds and put them in a small mesh wire cage and set traps on the outside, but nothing doing. At last I brought the pheasants near the house and all hands watched them, and even then we lost some. I studied weasels night and day, but I was beaten. Where did they come from?
For there were weasels in the door-yard,
Weasels in the barn,
There were weasels in the hen-house,
Weasels all over the farm;
There were weasels in the engine-room,
Weasels in the shed,
And when I went to sleep at night