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, is likely to be the most visible
sign that you will find in winter of one bold and persistent little
hunter's presence.
Still less likely are you to be aware of it in summer or fall, even by
such traces of his passage, for he is in league with nature to keep his
secrets. When every foot of his outdoor wandering must be recorded she
makes him as white as the snow whereon it is imprinted, save his beady
eyes and dark tail-tip. When summer is green and autumn gay or sad of
hue she clothes him in the brown wherewith she makes so many of her wild
children inconspicuous.
Yet you may see him, now and then, in his white suit or in his brown,
gliding with lithe, almost snake-like movement along the lower fence
rails, going forth hunting or bearing home his game, a bird or a fat
field-mouse. In a cranny of an old lichen-scaled stone wall you may see
his bright eyes gleaming out of the darkness, like dewdrops caught in a
spider's web, and then the brown head thrust cautiously forth to peer
curiously at you. Then he may favor you with the exhibition of an
acrobatic feat: his hinder paws being on the ground in the position of
standing, he twists his slender body so that his forepaws are placed in
just the reverse position on the stone or rail above him, and he looks
upward and backward.
He may be induced to favor you with intimate and familiar acquaintance,
to take bits of meat from your hand and even to climb to your lap and
search your pockets and suffer you to lay a gentle hand upon him, but he
has sharp teeth wherewith to resent too great liberties.
While he may be almost a pet of a household and quite a welcome visitor
of rat-infested premises, he becomes one of the worst enemies of the
poultry-wife when he is tempted to fall upon her broods of chicks. He
seems possessed of a murderous frenzy, and slays as ruthlessly and
needlessly as a wolf or a human game-butcher or the insatiate angler.
Neither is he the friend of the sportsman, for he makes havoc among the
young grouse and quail and the callow woodcock.
The trapper reviles him when he finds him in his mink trap, for all the
beauty of his ermine a worthless prize drawn in this chanceful lottery.
When every one carried his money in a purse, the weasel's slender white
skin was in favor with country folk. This use survives only in the
command or exhortation to "draw your weasel." When the purse was empty,
it gave the spendthrift an untimely hint by creeping out of his pocket.
In the primest condition of his fur he neither keeps nor puts money in
your pocket now. He is worth more to look at, with his lithe body quick
with life, than to possess in death.