Short-tailed weasel
Weasels are slender, lithe little predators with ferocious reputations. Three species occur in North America: the relatively large and rather common long-tailed weasel, the tiny, rare least weasel, and the intermediate-sized short-tailed weasel or ermine shown here (they turn white in winter, except for the black tail tip). Weasels are exclusively carnivorous so I was very surprised to catch this one in a live-trap baited with birdseed (I was trying to catch least chipmunks for a research project). She seemed pretty calm (fortunately I did not have to explore her personal anatomy to determine her sex; female weasels are much smaller than males), so I brought her back to the lab and set up my camera to try to take a few shots before she vanished. Much to my surprise, she did some exploration before departing and I got a couple of decent images. I took the photos in a small enclosure, which she could easily leap out of -- which she did once she got bored. The pictures were taken at the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Lab in Mono County, California.
Images copyright by Mark A. Chappell
