94 THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 



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 wea- 

 sels 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 dis- 

 abled 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 hearcl a queer growling sound in 

 the grass ; on approaching the spot he saw two weasels 

 contending over a mouse ; each had hold of the mouse 

 pulling in opposite directions, and 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 had eaten the other up, picking his bones 

 clean and leaving nothing but the skeleton. 



The same farmer was one day in his cellar when 

 two rats came out of a hole near him in great haste, 

 and ran up the cellar wall and along its top till they 

 came to a floor timber that stopped their progress, 

 when they turned at bay, and looked excitedly back 

 along the course they had come. In a moment a wea- 

 sel, evidently in hot pursuit of them, came out of the 



