Stoats in the News!
Uncle B has been giving me hell this week about how stupid and lame my posts have been. And I’m, like, “pff! Dude! Don’t sell me short. I can be a lot stupider and lamer.” Here goes.
Top picture: Christopher Taylor of Word Around the Net sent me the link. Man thought he’d hit a stoat in the road, drove thirty something miles to his home, woke up next morning to find an apparently healthy stoat poking its head out of his grill. I’m guessing that little beast was pissed.
Say what you will about the decline of the once-proud Daily Telegraph (where he found that item) — they run some really fine pictures of cute animals and funny signs from around the world.
Just minutes after Christopher’s link, Bruce sent me this item, intriguingly headlined Family harassed by vengeful weasel.
A man in China trapped a weasel in his yard and released it in the hills and has been plagued by the weasel’s mate ever since.
“It excretes on tables, and even throws dead mice corpses into our home. The scariest thing was when it jumped onto our bed, screaming. It seems to be protesting at me for catching his wife.”
Ah, the old excreting-on-tables ploy. The classics never get old.
The article is complete cock, of course (please to be reading complete cock in Uncle B’s accent. It’s a Britishism that doesn’t sound right in Americanese). Unless Chinese ones are fundamentally different, weasels don’t mate for life or stick together in pairs.
In fact, in an unusual, repulsive and highly successful reproductive strategy, tiny newborn weasels are often impregnated by they weasel-daddies, after which gestation is put “on hold” until the she-weasel is grown and the conditions are favorable. Weasels (but not stoats) are nasty baby-makin’ fools.
The Chinese characters for weasel translate literally as yellow rat wolf. I just happen to know that.
What I don’t know is which blog Bruce writes for. I’ve been staring at my blogroll for twenty minutes, disconsolately poking links and trying to remember.
Yes! That’s the kind of pharmaceutical-grade stupid and lame I have to offer!
Posted: August 13th, 2009 under animals, blogging, personal.
Comments: 10
Comments
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: August 13, 2009, 7:50 pm
Well, I suppose at least it’s a change from cute animals.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 13, 2009, 7:54 pm
Why, Uncle B? Are you scared of cute animals, too?
And no…I wasn’t thinking of getting a Yellow Rat Wolf tattoo. I was going to carve myself a chop. But that’s a lot of characters to fit in a small area, and I don’t carve so good.
Comment from surly ermine
Time: August 13, 2009, 11:26 pm
There you go, airing the dirty family laundry Weas.
That must be why weasels are solitary. If my pa was grandpa I’d skip the reunions too.
Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: August 13, 2009, 11:54 pm
In fact, in an unusual, repulsive and highly successful reproductive strategy, tiny newborn weasels are often impregnated by they weasel-daddies, after which gestation is put “on hold” until the she-weasel is grown and the conditions are favorable.
Somehow, this makes me think of one of the great country classics of the last quarter century
<url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7x1ETPkZsk]I'm My Own Grandpa Not necessarily the greatest performance of this classic but, well, hell. . .how good does the performer need to be when the material is that funny?
Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: August 13, 2009, 11:56 pm
DRAT! I think that was a genuninely on point and interesting post. But I guess Akismet hated the SINGLE link. Harumph!
Comment from Jakeman
Time: August 14, 2009, 12:27 pm
Huh. A friend sent me this link this morning, with the note “I, for one, welcome our new squirrel overlords.” I am very afraid.
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/enlarge/squirrel-portrait-banff.html
Comment from porknbean
Time: August 14, 2009, 6:38 pm
The weasel in the ‘right’ picture, looks so cute in it’s ‘jaunty’ way.
Comment from David Gillies
Time: August 15, 2009, 2:21 am
What I want to know, Stoaty, is if next winter in England is cold enough, will you turn into a Vermine? It’s pretty unlikely, since it has to be below something silly like -15°C for a month or so, but that happened in 1987 (or it felt like it) and it was gruesome.
Comment from Weasely
Time: August 17, 2009, 11:39 pm
Sorry to say, Weasel, but I was under the impression that it’s Stoats, and not Weasels that impregnate the young.
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Beware: more than one link in a comment is apt to earn you a trip to the spam filter, where you will remain -- cold, frightened and alone -- until I remember to clean the trap. But, hey, without Akismet, we'd be up to our asses in...well, ass porn, mostly.<< carry me back to ol' virginny