Wild Kingdom I

My cat caught an ermine this morning. Yes, an ermine. Nevermind that the ermine was probably doing a better job controlling the mouse population in my apartment than my cat (though I have to hand it to Shudi; he's killed two mice already this year, more than in the past three years combined).* I'm grinding beans for coffee when all hell breaks loose in the living room closet, fur and claw. Next thing I know, Shudi is parading across the kitchen floor, carrying this long white mammal by its neck. Smaller than a weasel, but the same pointed face. A blacked-tipped tail. The thing has emitted a nasty, musky smell, not quite as sweet as skunk, but full of the same mortal fear. Shudi walks right up to me to give me the squirming fur ball; an early birthday present. I get a vision of an injured, angry carnivore set free at my feet, so naturally I take a few steps back. Rebuffed, my ferocious killer of a housecat takes his prey to my office and lets it go under my desk. "Just kill it," I tell him, but no, he wants sport. Though bleeding profusely, the victim has just enough strength to drag itself into the narrow space between my filing cabinet and the wall, just out of reach of Shudi's claws. Shudi skulks around the cabinet for a while, but now he's asleep on my bed, dreaming, I'm sure, of his hard morning's work. I know I should put the poor thing out of its misery, but I'm not sure what would happen if I pulled out the filing cabinet to get at it. What if it's not so injured as it seems, and decides to charge? What if it escapes and goes to die in some unreachable hidden corner where I'll never find it?

UPDATE: I went out to run some errands, and when I came back, the ermine was no longer behind the filing cabinet. The bloodstain was still there, so I didn't imagine it. Anyone know how to get ermine blood out of unfinished pine? (Yes, there is an injured or recently dead ermine in some unreachable hidden corner in my house. I can't let this worry me too much, though).

* To all the animal lovers out there who might complain that domesticated cats are decimating the wildlife population, I agree with you. My cat is an indoor cat, safely removed from the daily rigors of the predator-prey dynamic. With this caveat: if the prey comes to the house, it's fair game.

Comments

[Doug]

Wow, we gotta park a guard on that frontier of the implausible! Your housecat brought you an ermine? Next we'll hear your goldfish spit up a jewel.

I can imagine, for the rest of your life when you hear a noise in the wall, thinking, "a mouse . . . or an ermine."

[turboglacier]

That IS pretty amazing. I've never seen an ermine, let alone an ermine in the house.

It sort of reminds me of the time at an ex-girlfriend's barn-like apartment (in Sharon, VT) when a flying squirrel got in and started soaring around the rafters.