cartoon by Gail Boysen-Preset-Boysen
Don't Mess with a Weasel
by Dave McBee
Here it is - my first store-bought skull, that of a mink.
Picked it up in Forks, Washington at The Bead Store, which stocks an amazing amount of arts and crafts stuff like, well, beads, and polished rocks and porcupine quills and deer hides and sea urchin spines (drilled) and polished bits of elk antler and goat horn (antler is solid, horn is hollow), as well as the occasional weasel skull. Next time you’re in Forks, stop in (it’s at 122 Soleduck Way, right across the street from Sully’s Burgers).
Anyway, note the herkin’ mandibular process (that’s the big triangular projection at the rear of the lower jaw); it offers a huge area for muscle attachments to snap those jaws shut. The sagittal crest, running along the top of the skull, along with the flaring ridge along the back edge of the skull, offer strong points of attachment for the other ends of those same muscles.
And then there are the teeth: the disproportionately long canines, both upper and lower, capture your immediate attention. The carnassials, at the back of the jaw (these are the teeth a dog uses to work a bone) are designed for shearing meat. And crushing things. I carefully removed the two dots of glue that the skull’s preparatory had used to immobilize the jaw’s hinge so I could move it. I noticed that when closing the jaws, the canines slide closely, self-sharpening-ly closely, past each other before the jaws firmly, audibly, snap shut.
Which immediately evoked a past memory: sometime ago, in a nature magazine, I saw a pictorial essay about birds of prey that had been photographed with what appeared to be at first glance some very punk jewelry hanging from their bodies. In the breast or neck of each of several eagles and hawks was the skull of a weasel, imbedded by the teeth. I realize that this sounds bizarre but it’s also too bizarre for me to have imagined. From what I can remember of the text, it was surmised that either the weasel was the intended target, and as the raptor grabbed it up with its talons, the tiny weasel twisted around and bit for all it was worth with its dying breath. Or the weasel was possibly defending a heap of carrion that it had claimed as its own (weasels are like that). The chain of circumstances leading to this macabre bit of unintended ornamentation were described as rare, but not so rare that a handful of occurrences hadn’t been noticed and photographed. The rest of the body of the weasel had been torn away by the beak or talons of the bird, but apparently, in these cases, the weasels had bit into places that the bird couldn’t reach.
Martha, my biologist friend, explained to me the unlikelihood of such a thing, as the canine teeth in carnivores tend to fall out after death (the bite would have to persist until scar tissue formed). But I’m truly certain I saw this (some of the skulls still had shreds of decaying flesh attached, others had been there long enough for the skull to appear clean and bleached by the sun). If any of you have ever heard of such a thing, please let me know I haven’t become delusional.
MINK SQUEEZINS
I had to show the skull to Raymond, owner of my neighborhood shoe repair shop. Several years ago, I was picking up a can of mink oil to waterproof my hiking boots when hit with a fit of curiosity: “Ray, how do they make mink oil?” (I had gone through a similar, if drug-abetted, phase regarding baby oil.)
Ray assured me that the minks were not harmed during the process.
“Aw, come on, Ray! Minks are vicious, fast little weasels with sharp teeth, and they’re smelly (somehow, I knew that much even then)! How do they get the oil without killing them?”
He reassured me that the minks survived the process, if only because “that’s what I’ve told folks for years.”
So I wrote to the Portland Mink Oil Company and posed the question. I got a nice letter back from their vice-president, detailing several of the lies with which they’d kept themselves amused telling folks who asked them how they did what they did (only a few of which I can remember), including:
1) They brush the mink vigorously (at least 1000 strokes) and then towel them off thoroughly. Then they get the oil off the towels.
2) They toss the mink into something resembling a wine press, put a heavy lid on top, and then stomp up and down in the lid until the oil runs out the sides of the press.
3) They toss the mink into washing machines and agitate until they can skim the oil off the top of the water.
Then he admitted that the mink really do end up dead: mink oil is a by-product of the fur industry. The critters are killed for their luxurious pelts. The carcasses are then rendered; the oil is extracted during some point of that process.
He thanked me for my interest, and asked me if I was a writer, and said if I wasn’t, I should be. Wish I could find the letter. The copy that Ray posted on the wall of his shop has long since disappeared, too.
DO YOU WANT ONE ON YOUR ASS, TOO?
A couple springs ago, I was walking down the Lower Hoh River Road when a tiny weasel no longer than my hand (later research identified it as a Least weasel) sinuously undulated across the road just in front of me, gripping in its jaws a dead fledgling bigger, considerably bigger, than it was. It paused, regarded the giant looming above it, bared whatever parts of its teeth that weren’t already buried in dead baby bird, glowered, and loudly hissed at me, before continuing on its way .
Never mess with a weasel.
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