Maggie and the White Shadow

I have been practicing the art of tracking for the last few days. Calling it the "art of tracking" is a way of romanticizing for city folk what we really do in the woods since tracks are seldom visible unless there is a snowfall or a soft spot in a trail. What trackers mostly do around here is look for sign. Sign is anything from scraped vegetation to the remains of an acorn. The largest subset of sign is poop which trackers euphemize as scat. Scat is almost as diagnostic of an animal as a track.

Enter Maggie the sixteen pound Pomeranian. Poms, despite folks silly desire to make them as small as possible, are meant to be all purpose farm dogs designed to herd the farm animals and then haul a sled or cart to market loaded with carcasses. They are not bred for their noses like beagles, bassets, or bloodhounds, but the all-purpose label sticks here as well and Poms can follow a trail pretty well. Now lady canines are supposed to leave most of the scent marking to the boys, but ALL Poms are Alpha dogs so Maggie marks up her territory wherever she finds an interloper. This combination of ability and attitude makes her an ideal trail dog. At twelve she is still active and intelligent and has found many things in the last week that will be interesting to NRT's new EcoRangers. Just as an aside, do you know why dogs scatch after they go to the bathroom? Always thought it was a way to cover up the scat, but instead it's just the opposite. Both dogs and cats have scent glands on the bottom of their feet. The space between the scent of the front paws and the back paws gives any other dog a slightly exaggerated view of the size of the first one. No matter how exaggerated there must be coyotes at Sheep Pasture who are laughing their heads off at Maggie's attempts to impress.

Yesterday, the Master Scatologist discovered some old fox scat along the Coit Trail. Not an unusual finding although the fox population waxes and wanes in a complex dance of prey availability and presence of coyote competitors. Further along the trail Maggie discovered a log with fresh weasel scat interestingly on closer, (but not too close!) examination traces of old weasal scat were found as well. This is clearly an important spot for the weasel population in the East Woods.

Now I imagine most readers have seen a red fox a time or two in Easton so I'll talk about Mustela frenata, the long-tailed weasel today.

Yes, the first thing you should know is that this weasel changes color between summer and winter. The process takes about a month to complete twice a year. The long-tailed weasel is the biggest animal with the weasel name (other mustelids like fishers, martens, and minks have other names). It is 12 to 17 inches long with half that length being tail and weighs only 7 or 8 ounces. It is a super-efficient predator and can kill prey five times its size. Like all mustelids its a tough customer, there is even a record of one killing a large hawk as the hawk was flying away with the weasel in its talons. The word weasel comes from the Sanskrit "visra" meaning to have a musty smell. All mustelids have this smell topped off by the incredibly "musty" skunk. Weasels are elusive partly by nature, partly by camouflage,  and partly because they are nocturnal. You are unlikely to see one unless you catch it in a hen house where weasels can go into a killing frenzy. The weasel was probably attracted to the hen house in the first place by rats or mice. Outside the hen house weasels are our friends because their typical diet of rodents helps keep the deer tick population in check. The weasels in the East Woods are not doing a particularly good job since it is one of the most tick infested areas at Sheep Pasture. The weasel is also adaptable to the presence of humans to a degree so it is one animal that is not currently threatened with extinction.

Today, I'm taking my snowshoes out to  find the weasel's track. Maggie loves snow, but she may be staying home today in case I do follow the weasel to its den. Weasels normally live in ground burrows including things as tiny as an abandoned chipmunk hole. As noted in earlier blogs Maggie only bothers to attack other dogs and chase deer, but no sense taking the chance she'll mistake a smelly old weasel for a Yorkshire terrier.