Naturalist humor

[jhetley]

Okay, last weekend Wife was showing some people stuff near the nature center, including these nice neat holes in the snow that represent weasel tunnels.  Short-tailed weasels, right up there with shrews in the "red in tooth and claw" department of things you don't want to meet on their own scale.  But since the animals in question were not present to display, she had to describe them in their winter persona of "ermine", white body fur with a black tail tip.

"You've seen those portraits of kings and emperors and popes in those white fur coats, spotted with black?  Those are ermine fur, stitched together.  Proof that people have always connected rulers with weasels."