There is a creature which lives with such intensity, always in motion, burning itself so completely in the fire of survival that nothing is left behind—not even a trace of ash. Voracious, incorrigible, and focused, it approaches obstacles like mere stones in a stream, inundating them and swallowing them up with its force of personality and grit. It is not complicated or philosophical—a simple critter. Simplicity is manifested only when one’s life, one’s circumstances, are very clear—and for the long-tailed weasel, life is very clear.
A curious animal, even so, you may never see a long-tailed weasel in the wild. They’re not rare, just rarely seen. One such encounter was described by Annie Dillard in her essay Living with Weasels:
“He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small, and pointed as a lizard’s; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairs’ worth, and then the pure white fur began to spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I didn’t see, any more than you see a window.”
With badgers and wolverines in their family tree, long-tailed weasels come hard-wired with some serious attitude. While first impressions are cute and curious—as in a lively kitten—ounce for ounce we are talking about one of nature’s most audacious and ferocious predators. In Living with Weasels, Ms. Dillard relates an anecdote about a naturalist who refused to kill a weasel that had bitten his hand all the way to the hilt and stuck like a barnacle. Nothing the man did could persuade the animal to release its grip, so he walked a half mile to the nearest water—weasel firmly clamped to his wounded hand—and “soaked him off like a stubborn label.” Now that’s audacity!
If there’s such an animal as a long-tailed weasel there must, by contrast, be a short-tailed weasel, right? Right! The thing is, short-tailed weasels don’t hang out in Texas; rather, in the north and northeastern states. Because their fur may turn white in winter, short tails are also known as ermines (as are “stoats,” typically found farther north in America, and in Europe and Asia). There’s also a species known as the least weasel, the smallest of them all. The long-tailed weasel is, however, the most widely distributed weasel in the U.S.
In Texas, there are five sub-species of long-tailed weasel in different parts of the state. Mustela frenata neomexicana mostly west of the 100th meridian, M. f. texensis in the central part of the state, M. f. primulina in the extreme northeastern part of the state, M. f. arthuri east of the Balcones Fault Zone in east-central and southeastern areas, and M. f. frenata in the southern part of the state along the Gulf Coast and adjacent to Mexico. Grain of salt: their secretive nature makes it difficult to track distribution or abundance accurately.
At only 12-20 inches this spritely creature is well known for its willingness to take on larger animals and not back down—if cornered, it quickly turns vicious and aggressive. Its slender body is a rich dark brown color above and a creamy off-white below. The head is often darker brown or black with a few white markings. The tail always has a black tip. There are many coat variations in different habitats. Eyes are black in daylight but shine a bright emerald green when caught in a spotlight at night. Because they have short legs, when they run their back tends to arch, giving them yet another slang name: “the snake with legs.”
Weasels are solitary animals, living and hunting alone. They can easily scoot up a tree or swim a swift moving stream with no problem. Weasels seem to be well-designed for their station in life. Given a slinky body shape, they’re also accomplished underground hunters, easily able to slip into tiny crawl spaces. If you’re a small rodent, the last thing you want to see is a weasel in your burrow! They eat small mammals like shrews, moles, ground squirrels, tree squirrels, gophers, all sorts of mice and even small cottontail rabbits. Occasionally they’ll eat small birds, reptiles, amphibians, and insects. Death by weasel is quick and surgical. Most of their prey is killed with a single bite on the back of the neck, after climbing onto the back, hugging the victim with its body and legs. Weasels often kill more than they need, storing the excess meat for future use. With lots of energy and a high-level metabolism, they eat a lot and often.
The name “weasel” carries unsavory connotations in many cultures. Cunning, conniving, untrustworthy and merciless are just a few of the associations. Many a farmer has been horrified by the damage done to a chicken coop by a single weasel. In what appears to be a killing frenzy, weasels often destroy every chicken in the enclosure. A hungry long-tailed weasel has no conscience. It may kill and eat its own siblings or offspring if no other food is available. Indeed, the long-tailed weasel has been aptly called “nature’s psychopath.”
When it comes to the obligations of home ownership, weasels always rent. They’ll typically nest in a rotten log, hollow stump, under tree roots, or a hole someone else has engineered. They line their home with grass, leaves, or rodent fur. They often have more than one residence, depending on area of the country. Their range is usually large, taking them several days to cover it all. Weasels are active both in the daytime and at night but more so after dark. With the emotional stability of a cork in high seas, they’re on the go year-round. You won’t catch a weasel hibernating or digging its own burrow!
Being related to skunks and badgers, the long-tailed weasel is good at making thoroughly disgusting musk from anal glands made for that purpose. Purportedly it is nasty, nasty stuff, and is applied directly by dragging its bottom side along the surface it wants coated. This process serves multiple purposes, ranging from impressing the opposite sex, marking territory, or discouraging predators to stay away. Predators include dogs and cats, bobcats, foxes, and snakes. Only the bravest (or most naïve) winged predators threaten weasels, as the reach of their long body and viciousness can easily destroy vulnerable body parts while in flight.
When early summer rolls around, it’s time to make baby weasels (called kits). Male long-tailed weasels will have several partners, just to make sure all the ovens are full. A pregnant female will go through diapause, where the fertilized eggs delay implantation in the uterine wall until the following spring. That’s what triggers embryonic development, ensuring the best possible time of the year for delivery. With only one litter a year, litter size varies from 4 to 5 kits but sometimes as many as 9. Newborns come into the world blind, helpless and covered with fine white hair.
Eyes open for the new kits at 36 days, well after they have been weened and are eating solid food. Scientists believe that the father may stick around to help deal with the brood, however, the young remain with the mother until fully grown. For female babies, full adult size and sexual maturity is reached at about 3 months, but males take until 12 months.
Turns out, Texas’s only native weasel is the product of a 5–7-million-year process when northern forests were replaced by grassland. That’s when small, burrowing rodents came into their own. Originally the long-tailed weasel’s ancestors were much bigger, but quickly evolved smaller to exploit the new food source. The species thrived during the Ice Age, as its small size and long body allowed it to easily operate beneath snow and wreak havoc among rodent burrows. While all this was happening in North America, the stoat evolved as its mirror image in Eurasia. When falling sea levels exposed the Bering land bridge, the stoat crossed over into North America, but the long-tailed weasel never ventured into Eurasia. Today, the long-tailed weasel can be found from southern Canada throughout all the U.S. and Mexico, then southward through all of Central America and into northern South America.
Most modern religions look on animals as being lower than humans, with no god-nature, no soul in them. We’ve drifted away from the old ways of acknowledging the spirituality of animals. How is it that an animal with so much to teach us is seldom seen? How could a life of such large hopes be so small in the end? The weasel has no ego. It lives by necessity without bias or motive, in the moment. Open to time and death, it notices and pays attention to everything it comes across and chooses to live life with a fierce and pointed will. Would that we all could be so enlightened.
By Larry Gfeller