r hand between the thumb and forefinger. She
could not choke it off, and ran to a neighbor for help, but no one could
remove it without tearing the flesh from the woman's hand. Then some one
suggested a pail of water; into this the hand and weasel were plunged,
but the creature would not let go even then, and did not until it was
drowned.

The weasel is a subtle and destructive enemy of the birds. It climbs
trees and explores them with great ease and nimbleness. I have seen it
do so on several occasions. One day my attention was arrested by the
angry notes of a pair of brown thrashers that were flitting from bush to
bush along an old stone wall in a remote field. Presently I saw what it
was that excited them,--three large red weasels, or ermines, coming
along the stone wall, and leisurely and half playfully exploring every
tree that stood near it. They had probably robbed the thrashers. They
would go up the trees with great ease, and glide serpent-like out upon
the main branches. When they descended the tree, they were unable to
come straight down, like a squirrel, but went around it spirally. How
boldly they thrust their heads out of the wall, and eyed me and sniffed
me as I drew near,--their round, thin ears, their prominent, glistening,
bead-like eyes, and the curving, snake-like motions of the head and neck
being very noticeable. They looked like blood-suckers and egg-suckers.
They suggested something extremely remorseless and cruel. One could
understand the alarm of the rats when they discover one of these
fearless, subtle, and circumventing creatures threading their holes. To
flee must be like trying to escape death itself. I was one day standing
in the woods upon a flat stone, in what at certain seasons was the bed
of a stream, when one of these weasels came undulating along and ran
under the stone upon which I was standing. As I remained motionless, he
thrust out his wedge-shaped head, and turned it back above the stone as
if half in mind to seize my foot; then he drew back, and presently went
his way. These weasels often hunt in packs like the British stoat. When
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 weasels 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 disabled by my shot, but the troop was
not d