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“….a little bit of mouse…”?

Eww.

Reminds me of the question: “What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple.”

Answer: “Half a worm.”

My one and only cat was a dedicated and enthusiastic mouser, but he’d lived on his own for awhile—so no dinner bowl no Friskies. Twice a year we’d get an influx of mice—during wheat harvest, and with the first cold snap. He was in cat heaven.

Congratulations on seeing your first wild stoat! I am completely jealous as I have never seen one myself. In addition I have only seen Monsieur Fox once in the wild in my entire life, and he fascinated me. Had I been a grand pheasant rather than a mere peasant, he’d have snapped me up sure.

As for that statuary, I really, really admire it, and I have just the place for it – since I’d have to sell my car to afford it, I could put it in my garage.

Stoaty—I think Some Vegetable has swerved into a a great idea:
Stoaty Weasel statues. I’d buy one 😉

I lived out in the country for many years. Coyote, Eagles, fox, variety of owls and beaver aplenty. More field mice cum house mice than I care to think about. plenty of snakes working to keep down the mouse population. And people wonder why I prefer city living.

In the early 70s, my second father swore he saw a black-footed ferret at the back of beyond on an oil lease in the Texas panhandle. Of course the BFF was almost extinct by then, but Pop didn’t know it. He sketched a drawing in his oil company notebook and sure enough, it looked exactly like a black-footed ferret. I wish I’d save that drawing.

The first cat I knew as a boy, Rusty the big red tabby, was a solid mouser. More than once during his life my mother found part of a dead mouse on her dining table chair, or arranged neatly on the floor by her bed where she’d see it first thing. It didn’t bother her, she’d grown up on a farm.

Cat experts tell us that cats do this to teach us how to hunt; but then they also say that we humans stand in for the cat’s mother, extending their kittenhood, as we’re bigger and we provide food. But kittens don’t kill to show Mom how to hunt — it’s the other way around. So I don’t believe it. I think the cats are showing off. “Look what a Big Bad Killer I am!”

Oh, as for wild animals, I’ve seen a few raccoons at night in my urban but tree-lined neighborhood, and one or two opossums. (In his outdoor days, my current cat Wolf, who is huge, took one assessing look at an opossum, and declined to tussle with it.) And in Colorado, in Red Rocks Park one morning, I spied a red fox sitting calmly on the far side of the roadway. Didn’t bother him that I was in my car, engine running, on the other side of the road. He sniffed the air, mentally shrugged (I guess), and went trotting on his way, unruffled.

Big grassy field over my back fence, mice up the ying-yang. Edward (the local feral) has it easy. And yes, raccoons and possums too.

I just wish my cat would kill the mice before offering them to me. He thinks it’s a great game to help the old man chase them around the living room.