CONCERNING WEASELS.
By WILLIAM E. CRAM.
Why is it that while popular fancy has attributed all sorts of uncanny and supernatural qualities to owls and cats, and that no ghost story or tale of horrid murder has been considered quite complete without its rat peering from some dark corner, or spider with expanded legs suddenly spinning down from among the rafters, no such grewsome association has ever attached itself to the weasels, creatures whose every habit and characteristic would seem to suggest something of the sort? Now, fond as I am of cats, I should never think of denying that they are uncanny creatures, to say the least. But, suppose it was the custom of our domestic tabbies to vanish abruptly or even gradually on occasion, like the Cheshire cat after its interview with Alice, that would at least furnish some excuse for the general prejudice against them, but would really be no more than some of our commonest weasels do whenever it serves their purpose. I remember one summer afternoon I was trout-fishing along a little brook that ran between pine-covered hills. As I lay stretched on the bank at the foot of a great maple I saw a weasel run along in the brush fence some distance away. A few seconds later he was standing on the exposed root of the tree hardly a yard from my eyes. I lay motionless and examined the beautiful creature minutely, till suddenly I found myself staring at the smooth greenish-gray root of the maple with no weasel in sight. Judging from my own experience, I should say that this is the usual termination of any chance observations of either weasels or minks.
Occasionally they may be seen to dart into the bushes or behind some log or projecting bank, but much more frequently they vanish with a suddenness that defies the keenest eyesight.
In all probability this vanishing is accomplished by extreme rapidity of motion, but if this is the case then the creature succeeds in doing something utterly impossible to any other warm-blooded animal of its size. Mice, squirrels, and some of the smaller birds are all of them swift enough at times, but except in the case of the humming bird none of them, I believe, succeed in accomplishing the result achieved by the weasels. The humming bird, in spite of its small size, leaves us a pretty definite impression of the direction it has taken when it darts away; but when a mink, half a yard in length and weighing several pounds, stands motionless before one with his dark coat conspicuous against almost any background, and the next instant is gone without a rustle or the tremor of a blade of grassA weasel, it leaves one with an impression of witchcraft difficult to dispel; and best appreciated when one sees it for one's self. Nor is the everyday life of the weasel quiet or commonplace; his one object in life apparently is to kill, first to appease his hunger, then to satisfy his thirst for warm blood, and after that for the mere joy of killing.
The few opportunities I have had for observing these animals have never shown them occupied in any other way, nor can any hint of anything different be gained from the various writers on the subject, while accounts of their attacking and even killing human beings in a kind of blind fury are too numerous and apparently well authenticated to be entirely ignored. These attacks are said usually to be made by a number of weasels acting in concert, and the motive would appear to be revenge for some injury done to one of their number. There seems to be something peculiar about the entire family of weasels. The American sable or pine marten is said to have strange ways that have puzzled naturalists and hunters for years. In the wilderness no amount of trapping has any effect on their numbers, nor do they show any especial fear of man or his works, occasionally even coming into lumber camps at night and being especially fond of old logging roads and woods that have been swept by fire; but at the slightest hint of approaching civilization they disappear, not gradually, but at once and forever, and the woods know them no more. If there is anything in the theory of the survival of the fittest, why is it that not one marten has discovered that, like other animals of its size, it could manage to live comfortably enough in the vicinity of man? The mink and otter still follow the course of every brook and river and manage to avoid the keen eyes of the duck hunter, while for six months in the year their paths are sprinkled with steel traps set either especially for them or for the more plebeian muskrat. If a pair of sables could be persuaded to take up their quarters in some parts of New England they could travel for dozens of miles through dark evergreen woods with hollow and decaying trees in abundance, while at present there are almost no traps set in a manner that need disturb creatures of their habits. Partridges, rabbits, and squirrels, which form their principal food, are nearly if not quite as abundant as before the country was settled, so that it would certainly not require any very decided change of habits to enable them to exist, but evidently the root of the matter goes deeper than that, and, like some tribes of Indians, it is impossible for them to multiply or flourish except in the primeval forest.