The Last Word On Nothing

A couple of weeks ago, during a backpacking trip in Wyoming’s Wind River Range, Elise and I shared our campsite with a short-tailed weasel. He, or she, was lithe and frolicsome, darting over rocks and flowing around the trunks of lodgepoles in relentless pursuit of squirrels. Weasels have a sort of split reputation — they are, in our imaginations, both furtive and ferocious, rarely glimpsed yet hellaciously brave; you might call them Terror Hermits. This one seemed to embody that duality: He scurried through our site almost too rapidly and liquidly for our eyes to track, but periodically settled atop boulders and stared at us, head lifted and cocked, with total fearlessness. When I followed him to the crevice that appeared to be his den, he poked out his head with what struck me as cheerful curiosity. Rarely have I stared into such a frank, inquisitive animal face — surely the last visage that many a pika, bird, and chipmunk ever saw. 

Mustelids, in general, don’t get much love — from conservationists, the public, or, for that matter, nature writers (with the notable exception of the late Brian Doyle, who wrote a thrilling ode to porcupine-hunting fishers, not to mention a novel called Mink River). Aside from Douglas Chadwick’s The Wolverine Way and Todd McLeish’s Return of the Sea Otter, I can’t think of a great book about any member of the weasel family. 

So here’s my quick pitch to any publisher reading this post: a book, entitled Mustelid Madness, about the glory of, yes, weasels. There are something like sixty members of the weasel family, which means no shortage of worthy stories, though many of those species are so covert and understudied that our options are limited (not necessarily a bad thing!). Naturally we’d need chapters on wolverines, otters, and the notorious honey badger. I’d also lobby for the inclusion of black-footed ferrets, fishers, and the extinct sea mink. After that, take your pick among Siberian weasels and Patagonian weasels and Steppe polecats and Burmese ferret-badgers. I couldn’t tell you a thing about any of these critters, but I’m certain they have stories to tell. The world’s Terror Hermits always do.