She is an admirable mother. Her litters are large ones--numbering as
a rule from five to eight, though occasionally as many as twelve are
found--and the feeding of these hungry mouths can only be a work of
desperate energy in the weaning days. It is a fine sight to see the
mother foraging at the head of her grown-up family. A long time passes
before the young stoats can cater for themselves. The mother does not
leave them until they are perfectly qualified to hunt on their own
accord--which their innate blood-thirstiness at last prompts them to
do in preference to eating food which their mother has captured. In
the young stoat's natural love of hunting lies the cause of the final
severance of family ties. With many animals it appears that motherly
solicitude continues relatively to the relief obtained through the
young taking their mother's milk. Yet in the stoat there appears to
be a scrap of the human mother's reasoning love for her children. We
have known a stoat whose young had been destroyed, when as large as
herself, to seek them out, and with diligent care and labour remove
their bodies to a distant resting-place, where she stayed by them for
days, though she appeared no longer to bring them their former abundant
supplies of food. When a stoat, the mother of a family, is killed,
her young do not fail to come to her--but in this case there is no
disinterested love. The apparent affection springs chiefly from desire
of food. No food forthcoming, the young stoats quickly begin to devour
their unfortunate mother. The gamekeeper knows that having once caught
a mother stoat, he will have little difficulty in catching her family
also; but having captured the family, it is by no means easy to secure
the mother.
When June comes, litters of young stoats, each one as big as the
mother, are strong enough to travel about, but for many weeks they
remain together, and depend for food on what their mother catches. Like
fox cubs, they spend their days eating, sleeping, and playing. Without
the aid of a trained dog the keeper is unlikely to discover the lodging
of a litter unless he chances to see the mother going to her young. He
may see her entering a burrow, a bavin-pile, a pile of hurdle-rods,
or of hurdles, or he may chance to see the young stoats out at play.
Should he come upon their playground his sharp eyes instantly note the
runs and the signs of rollings in the herbage--the playground is as the
playground of fox cubs in miniature. The comings and goings of a mother
stoat are cunning and silent. Once we found a place where a litter had
been lodging for weeks within a few yards of a man who had been making
hurdles day after day, and his report was that he had not seen "ne'er
a sign of a stoo-at." The family had gone when we found their lodging,
and it was evident that the old stoat had moved her young ones at night
just before they were old enough to proclaim their presence by coming
out from their wood-pile to play.
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