My first ermine (stoat) sighting

After working with Mara in the arena today, I led her over to the geldings to visit over the fence. There is this pretty Fresian/Tinker mix that likes Mara, he's the big pushy baby of the herd, jet black with a white star and snip, with tons of hair and the cutest tippy ears.


As we stood gazing at each other, I saw Nordic and Nevio and that brown Icelandic all standing at attention staring at something in the grass. Honest to God I first thought it was a seagull, from its long neck, lack of visible ears, pure white color, and head-bobbing behavior. But it had no wings.

It was bounding over the hilly ground, and investigating and peering up like a meerkat regularly. Yah, he'd look straight at us repeatedly like, "See you." What on earth could it be - I'd never seen anything like it, moving like that, its backbone so flexible it would bend in half in its little leaps.

It was snow white with a black tipped tail. Here is a picture of one. I must have watched him for 20 minutes with the horses. Maybe it's a marder, I thought, a type of weasel here that likes to eat the wiring in cars (ours too) which makes driving more exciting.

I got home and started searching online and it's called a stoat in English, and they are called ermines in Winter when they are white, because their coats make the royal ermine robes. Then I made the mistake of watching a BBC special showing one killing a rabbit ten times its size. Horrifying to see such a little thing effectively take down a big hare.

Um...can they kill cats? I mean, obviously they can, but do they? Here is a video of a cat and a stoat apparently playing, but it's kind of freaky for me because if that stoat wanted to, he might be able to kill the cat. Although it is cute that the writer says "This is how you make us feel, cats."

Speaking of "mean cats" - I like this video of cats controlling dogs. I think it's particularly funny when the cats are simply lying down, looking completely passive.

Stoat folklore from Wiki:  To encounter a stoat when setting out for a journey was considered bad luck, but one could avert this by greeting the stoat as a neighbour^. Stoats were also supposed to hold the souls of infants who died before baptism. One popular European legend had it that a white stoat would die before allowing its pure white coat to be besmirched. When it was being chased by hunters, it would supposedly turn around and give itself up to the hunters rather than risk soiling itself.