A lady tells the following anecdote of her pet weasel:
"If I pour some milk into my hand my tame weasel will drink a good deal, but if I do not pay it this compliment it will scarcely take a drop. When satisfied it generally goes to sleep. My chamber is the place of its residence and I have found a method of dispelling its strong odor by perfumes. By day it sleeps in a quilt, into which it gets by an unsewn place which it has discovered on the edge; during the night it is kept in a wired box or cage, which it always enters with reluctance and leaves with pleasure. If it be set at liberty before my time of rising, after a thousand playful little tricks, it gets into my bed and goes to sleep beside me. If I am up first it spends a full half-hour in caressing me, playing with my fingers like a little dog, jumping on my head and my neck with a lightness and elegance which I have never found in other animals. If I present my hands at the distance of three feet it jumps into them without ever missing. It exhibits great address and cunning to compass its ends, and seems to disobey certain prohibitions merely through caprice. In the midst of twenty people it distinguishes my voice, seeks me out and springs over all the others to come at me."
The weasel probably lives from eight to twelve years. It is easily caught in a trap, with bait of an egg, a small bird, or a mouse. No other animal is so fitly endowed for hunting mice.
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| FROM COL. F. NUSSBAUMER & SON. A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER, CHICAGO. | WEASEL. ⅖ Life-size. | COPYRIGHT 1900, BY NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO. |
In the attempt to check the rabbit pest in New Zealand, recourse has been had to the importation of natural enemies, such as ferrets, stoats, and weasels. In the Wairarapa district some 600 ferrets, 300 stoats and weasels, and 300 cats had been turned out previous to 1887. Between January, 1887, and June, 1888, contracts were made by the government for nearly 22,000 ferrets, and several thousand had previously been liberated on crown and private lands. Large numbers of stoats and weasels have also been liberated during the last fifteen years.
This host of predatory animals speedily brought about a decrease in the number of rabbits, but their work was not confined to rabbits, and soon game birds and other species were found to be diminishing. The stoat and the weasel are much more bloodthirsty than the ferret, and the widespread destruction is attributed to them rather than to the latter animal. Now that some of the native birds are threatened with extermination, it has been suggested to set aside an island along the New Zealand coast, where the more interesting indigenous species can be kept safe from their enemies and saved from complete extinction.