"Hair - trigger mousetraps - with teeth" (C.King, 89)
| There's a weasel in the works... particularly if you're American, where nearly all members of the family Mustelidae are called weasel. |
| There is something rather delightful about a weasel - bright, beady black eyes, large, rounded ears and an active twitching tail. They climb trees well, swim with ease and move like lightning. |
| 'a
sprite...a golden leaf upon a whirlwind' |
Generations of gamekeepers have given the weasel a bad press, but as effective rat-catchers and rodent-exterminators they were much appreciated by earlier country folk. In Spanish they were colloquially called 'bonuca-mona-muca' which means 'pretty little one'. |
| The ancient Egyptians kept tame weasels before the cat had been domesticated, and nowadays the ferret is commonly kept in North America. |
| The ermine, Mustela
erminea, is a stoat in it's white winter pelage - unless
it is in North America, where the term stoat is not used
and ermine is used all year-round regardless of the
creature's current pelage.
|
