WICKED WEASELS. 31 



was found in their new quarters a large pile of rats' 

 bones, and, as subsequent experience proved, these little 

 weasels had effectually cleared the premises of that terri- 

 ble pest. My dog, however, was constantly on the watch, 

 and finally worried the weasels so that they again sought 

 new quarters. In September, I found them once again, 

 and this time they had made a new home under a large 

 oak growing on the border of a meadow. Here they 

 seemed to be living wholly upon crickets, frogs, and 

 mice, particularly the pretty white-footed or smaller 

 jumping mouse. The number of common black crickets 

 and grasshoppers destroyed by them was enormous, and 

 this fact went a great way toward recommending the 

 animal as being really sometimes as beneficial as it was 

 at others destructive. Certainly this one family of weasels 

 did me no harm. They destroyed half a dozen young 

 chickens, I know ; but this is offset by ridding me of a 

 plague of rats, at least for that year, and then of the 

 grasshoppers that I have mentioned. 



The care that had been exercised, in early summer, to 

 prevent the discovery of their nest, was now abandoned. 

 The ground in front of it, and but little less so all about 

 the tree, was covered with the remains of the crickets and 

 grasshoppers that swarmed in the surrounding meadows. 

 My impression is, that the weasels were constantly on the 

 alert for them, and seized every one that ventured upon 

 the grass near the nest. That frogs had also largely been 

 preyed upon was evident from the many bones that I 

 subsequently found in and near the entrance to the nest. 



While mice were the game which they appeared regu- 

 larly to hunt, one species proved not at all easy of cap- 

 ture, unless when surprised. This was the jumping 

 mouse, or jerboa. Quite late in the month (Septem- 

 ber) I was intensely interested in seeing my weasels once 



