CULTURE OF FUR-BEAEERS 249 



where quail or game is preserved the animal 

 often does great harm. 



It does not appear, however, that every 

 weasel kills chickens, nor that the same weasel 

 devotes its whole energies to this end, as a 

 man-eating tiger will do when once it learns 

 how easy it is to secure human prey. It seems, 

 rather, that an occasional weasel now and then 

 seizes a pullet or duck. The worst of it is, 

 however, that when it has done so its ferocity 

 is likely to be so fired by the taste or smell of 

 blood that it goes on massacring the fowls 

 after the manner of a wolf or a puma in a 

 sheep-fold, as though in a rage of blood intoxi- 

 cation. 



The weasel as a mouser. There is another 

 side to the account, however, and that is the 

 ceaseless and extensive beneficial work of these 

 ferocious little creatures in pursuit of the ror 

 dents which year by year destroy more grain 

 and young trees than all the poultry loss of 

 a year amounts to a hundred times over. In 

 the West they are the determined and inde- 

 fatigable enemies of ground-squirrels, gophers 

 and all sorts of mice, which they follow to the 



