y porch with my dog, talking with my neighbor and his wife,
who, with their dog, were standing in the road a few yards in front of
me. A chicken suddenly screamed in the bushes up behind the rocks just
beyond my friends. Then it came rushing down over the rocks past them,
flying and screaming, closely pursued by a long, slim red animal, that
seemed to slide over the rocks like a serpent. Its legs were so short
that one saw only the swift, gliding motion of its body. Across the road
into the garden, within a yard of my friends, went the pursued and the
pursuer, and into the garden rushed I and my dog. The weasel seized the
chicken by the wing, and was being dragged along by the latter in its
effort to escape, when I arrived upon the scene. With a savage glee I
had not felt for many a day, I planted my foot upon the weasel. The soft
muck underneath yielded, and I held him without hurting him. He let go
his hold upon the chicken and seized the sole of my shoe in his teeth.
Then I reached down and gripped him with my thumb and forefinger just
back of the ears, and lifted him up, and looked his impotent rage in the
face. What gleaming eyes, what an array of threatening teeth, what
reaching of vicious claws, what a wriggling and convulsed body! But I
held him firmly. He could only scratch my hand and dart fire from his
electric, bead-like eyes. In the mean time my dog was bounding up,
begging to be allowed to have his way with the weasel. But I knew what
he did not: I knew that in anything like a fair encounter the weasel
would get the first hold, would draw the first blood, and hence probably
effect his escape. So I carried the animal, writhing and scratching, to
a place in the road removed from any near cover, and threw him violently
upon the ground, hoping thereby so to stun and bewilder him that the
terrier could rush in and crush him before he recovered his wits. But I
had miscalculated; the blow did indeed stun and confuse him, but he was
still too quick for the dog, and had him by the lip like an electric
trap. Nip lifted up his head and swung the weasel violently about in the
air, trying to shake him off, uttering a cry of rage and pain, but did
not succeed in loosening the animal's hold for some moments. When he had
done so, and attempted to seize him a second time, the weasel was first
again, but quickly released his hold and darted about this way and that,
seeking cover. Three or four times the dog was upon him, but f