CHAPTER VIII. 



PUB-CLAD FIGHTERS. 

 The Weasels. 



We may consider the weasels furry friends, if 

 we look at the matter from an unprejudiced . stand- 

 point, and do the creatures the justice to admit that 

 they are remarkably serviceable, not so much in the 

 form of a muff or a collar as in the capacity of just 

 and effective destroyers of vermin. If the wolverene 

 is a friend on account of his fur, then the weasel is a 

 better friend, because he can beat the record of the 

 best-trained terrier in rat-killing. The sight of a 

 weasel just issuing from a rat hole licking his chops 

 after a good day's work, prompts one to call him a 

 glorious fighter ; the animal deserves our congratula- 

 tions, and he gets them. But when he comes out of 

 the henhouse and leaves thirty or forty bedraggled 

 corpses behind him which are not rats, but chickens, 

 then we reach for the gun and pay him in his own 

 coin. In the latter case I should properly introduce 



him hors de combat and physically exhausted, as the 



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