NEIGHBOURS OF THE WINTER NIGHT 121 



We have had weasels in the yard, too, though I have 

 never seen one there. The weasel is a land mink, or, 

 rather, the mink is a water weasel. A song of my boy- 

 hood used to affirm that "Pop goes the weasel." From 

 his tracks it is certain that he goes hop. He never 

 seems to walk, like his brother the mink, who has his 

 leisure moments, but always to leap, landing with feet 

 bunched, and rising almost from two tracks, side by 

 side, almost an inch apart, instead of the usual four of a 

 squirrel. The tracks in my yard showed that the 

 weasel was clearing a little more than a foot at a bound. 

 He , came up to investigate a pile of dead apple-tree trim- 

 mings, and jumped all around the pile. Then, evidently 

 finding nothing he wanted, he made off again. But 

 when a weasel is badly frightened he has the leaping 

 ability of a flea, and will clear sometimes as much as ten 

 feet. 



Let us follow the weasel out of the yard into the wilder 

 countryside. He likes to live in pine stumps or by old 

 stone walls, and he is an eager, savage little hunter. 

 Sometimes you may find in the snow his leaping trail 

 closing in with that of a cottontail, and then the marks 

 of blood. Sometimes, perhaps, you may be rewarded 

 by a sight of the weasel himself, his beady, slightly 

 bulging black eyes looking intently straight ahead over 

 the black tip of his nose. His back is brownish and his 

 tail-tip is black, but the rest of him is so white that he 

 seems two black eyes set in white, as preternaturally 



