86 SIGNS AND SEASONS 



came undulating along and ran under the stone 

 upon which I was standing. As I remained mo- 

 tionless, he thrust out his wedge-shaped head, and 

 turned it back above the stone as if half in mind 

 to seize my foot; then he drew back, and presently 

 went his way. These weasels often hunt in packs 

 like the British stoat. When I was a boy, my 

 father one day armed me with an old musket and 

 sent me to shoot chipmunks around the corn. 

 While watching the squirrels, a troop of weasels 

 tried to cross a bar- way where I sat, and were so 

 bent on doing it that I fired at them, boy-like, 

 simply to thwart their purpose. One of the weasels 

 was disabled by my shot, but the troop was not 

 discouraged, and, after making several feints to 

 cross, one of them seized the wounded one and bore 

 it over, and the pack disappeared in the wall on 

 the other side. 



Let me conclude this chapter with two or three 

 more notes about this alert enemy of the birds and 

 lesser animals, the weasel. 



A farmer one day heard a queer growling sound 

 in the grass; on approaching the spot he saw two 

 weasels contending over a mouse ; both had hold of 

 the mouse, pulling in opposite directions, and they 

 were so absorbed in the struggle that the farmer 

 cautiously put his hands down and grabbed them 

 both by the back of the neck. He put them in a 

 cage, and offered them bread and other food. This 

 they refused to eat, but in a few days one of them 



