I dare ya to reach down here and take my lunch away.....

I have been shooting a lot of red squirrels with an old Stevens single shot .22. I watch them fall off the stump from what was apparently a good hit, only to get out there later and have them mia. Well, this morning I went out after dropping one with a killing shot, reached down to pick it up and got one hell of a shrieking scolding. Bold little buggers. I wish I could entice him into the cabin as a mouser.

Ding! Round 1 to the Aussie;-)

With an attitude ten times their size.  You CAN coax him in to your cabin to terrorize the mice but you'll tire of him    Don't ask me how I know.

That is a Fat Tail Target Chewer.  We have those at Tacoma.  They are a rare, endangered species and have endangered species protection.  If they find their way into the target shed, they will eat so many they get too fat to get back out the hole they came in through.  It is a good idea to have a one way doggie door for their exit.  If they get stuck inside, all the targets will be  destroyed.

Thanks guys....so that's what a weasel looks like. I bet there is a row of really sharp, needle teeth under those beady little eyes. We used to use a ferret (similiar) to chase rabbits out of their warrens. Two of us would stand back to back with shotguns in the middle of a big warren and then the ferret (his name was Exocet...yes after the missile) would be released down a hole. Rabbits would start coming out of burrows left, right & center. Made for some fast & furious shotgun work! Ah....the joys of youth.
Spud

And in the British Empire, an ermine/weasel is a stoat.

I’ll call the little guy Kodiak after Alaska’s dinner bell bears. As the smallest member of the Mustelid family he sure has a BiG stink. He must be living under the sauna as it sure stinks in there now.

Ermines are really nice additions to hunting and backcountry ski trips. Long ago I had a deer stand at top of a side gully. Nearly every morning a cute ermine, all white except eyes, nose and tip of tail, would come check out my boots and me for at least 15 min.

A favorite rest stop on an ingress route for backcountry skiing usually had a pair of ermines that would check us out and clean up our cookie crums.

Most entertaining was a trip to a favorate grouse cover during a November day with no snow cover. There must have been at least a few ermines running around in there, so obvious on the dark brown ground cover. Really distracting!!

SKG

Royalty wore ermine trimmed garments - weasels for the weasels.

I came home one evening and the dog was throwing a fit. It had chased a weasel under the grating for the shop. I carefully extracted it, caged it, and took it to work the next morning. The container we used for storage of feed samples after analysis was plagued by mice. I introduced the weasel and the problem went away. Obviously he could get in and out of both  containers so kept them and the surrounding area rather clean of rodents. 

It is rumored that just turning a ferret loose in a barn will leave enough smell residue to discourage the mice for awhile.

His nose must not work.  I can't even get within 100 yards of a skunk that hasn't gone off