Weasel in the Woodpile

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Weasels are primarily nocturnal but often venture out in daylight. All have beady, forward-set eyes with the binocular vision necessary to successful hunters; small, rounded, close-set ears; large brains relative to the size of their bodies (a characteristic shared by all predators, including humans; elongated faces and even longer necks; slender, sleek-furred bodies; short legs; fivetoed feet with scimitar claws; and pencil-thin tails. The weasel's average life expectancy is about six years.

These pint-sized predators feed primarily on rodents-field mice, ground squirrels, pocket gophers, moles, voles, shrews, chipmunks, and rats—but also take lagomorphs (rabbits, hares, and pikas), birds (including chickens) and their eggs, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and fish.

In spite of their size (or lack of it), weasels are ferocious hunters, locating their quarry primarily by scent and shunning the common tactics of stalk and ambush in favor of flush and chase. The weasel is both sprinter and endurance runner, hinging its back, greyhoundlike, as it bounds along tirelessly until it has worn down its fleeing prey, then springing forward in a last lightning-fast leap to seize its exhausted dinner. Additionally, the tiny hunter's slim and supple form enables it to weasel through any opening large enough to accommodate its head (which your average wedding ring isn't), easily penetrating the hidey-holes of its quarry—which it dispatches instantly, with a powerful bite at the base of the skull.

Weasels need to eat an amount equal to only a quarter to a third of their body weight daily. That means a mouse or two a day will do. Still, when confronted with a particularly happy hunting ground, the little terrors often will continue killing until everything in sight is dead. Studies indicate that movement triggers such massacres. As long as there's a wriggle, jiggle, or squirm in an enclosed kill area, the weasel will press its attack, often wiping out an entire colony of mice—numbering in the hundreds—or a coop full of chickens in a few furious moments.

Understandably, the weasel is considered "bloodthirsty"—a term appearing repeatedly in most of the biology texts I've read. Today we know that bloodthirstiness is a false charge, that the weasel isn't some vampire guzzler of blood, and that its predatory excesses are sparked, not by evil intent (and certainly not by stomach parasites), but by instinct; in the weasel's genes it is programmed that he must lay in food when it's available, against those inevitable times when the pickings will be slim. There's little waste, since most species cache their excess kills in underground larders for future meals.

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