Weaseling

I was excited to see a photo in the latest issue of Outdoor Indiana magazine of an animal I’d never seen before. A cute little mustelid like this one in this great photo by andyworks I bought off iStock.

 

With the state’s flower and butterfly season nearing its end, I was looking for a new quest to help me avoid the writing I’m supposed to be doing, and there it was: the least weasel.

 

I imagined stalking the least weasel with my camera in the marshlands of Northern Indiana, learning how to sneak up on it so I could take its picture, maybe making up a story about a particularly moving moment of eye contact between us, finding a suitable quote from Wendell Berry or Annie Dillard.

 

But what to do after photographing the least weasel? Maybe find the lesser weasel? Then the greater weasel, and the greatest weasel of them all? How many sizes of weasel might there be?

 

So I Googled it and found out that most weasels are not classified by size, but other characteristics—there’s a long tailed weasel (tail slightly longer than the least weasel’s), a black-striped weasel (guess), a mountain weasel (unlikely to be found in Indiana, unless on one of those giant landfills), and even an Egyptian weasel (maybe at the Pyramids in Indianapolis?)

 

There’s also a stoat, a small weasel that turns into an ermine when it grows a fluffier coat in the winter, which seems random. Our Golden retriever grew a fluffier coat in the winter and we didn’t tell people he was a polar bear. You don’t get to change names with the change of a coat, or nobody would have known what name to call Elton John during a concert.

 

Then there’s a yellow-bellied weasel, which must be the worst thing you can call a weasel, or a gunfighter at high noon.

That’s when I realized that they probably decided not to name weasels by their size because to do so would disparage their character and reduce their numbers.

 

I mean, the least weasel, that’s okay—you could probably trust him most of the time, and we’ve all got our faults. “He’s the least weasel of the bunch”—yeah, I might actually aspire to that.

 

And the lesser weasel will call up to say he’s sick so just can’t make it to that volunteer work day pulling weeds on the rail trail, but you can more or less forgive that. You didn’t want to go either.

 

The great weasel might be such a weasel you’ve almost got to admire his ability to slip out of his promises and legal entanglements, though you can’t trust him, especially when you hear his bootlicks actually refer to him as “the Great Weasel.”

 

But the greatest weasel? He leaves your sister at the altar, or backs out of international treaties on a whim. And no wild animal in its right mind wants to be thought of like that. Talk about endangered species.

 

So naturalists carved a way out of their naming convention conundrum by finding some other distinguishing feature. If one has a shiny spot down the middle of its nose, you call it “silver septum weasel”, even if it’s the size of a Shetland pony and is the most weasel you’ve ever seen in your life.

 

My initial excitement was dampened once I realized there wouldn’t be a clearly defined variety of weasel sizes. A collage of those little heads in all in order of height would have made a cool new cover photo for my Facebook page. But I’m still game to try to photograph one, like andyworks did so well. They’re pretty cute, and I really don’t want to go back to that writing.

 

Although I’ve noticed there aren’t many photos of least weasels in the wild. Partly because they’re nocturnal, sure, but also because it’s inevitable. Every time you get ready to take the picture, they weasel out of it.