The Guardian/1920/06/18/Country Diary

17.

Where dead and broken stems of old reeds lie thick along the mere margin, some piled on land, others floating raft-like, a female stoat was hunting. She did not notice me, her attention directed towards the water. With easy, sinuous grace she bounded over the floating litter and dodged among the standing green stems; at each waterside alder or willow she paused for a second, reared on her hind legs, sniffing for prey. Bat, mouse, or young coot might be hiding amongst the semi-submerged roots. For some minutes before she came I had been quiet, and a couple of very immature rabbits had emerged from a burrow and were grazing near, nibbling the lush vegetation with mobile lips. But even the keen-eyed, keen-nosed predatory stoat may be at fault, and so intent was the hunter that it failed to glance landward and missed both rabbits and me.

Within a few yards, hanging from a branch, were half a dozen wind-dried, tailless corpses, all of stoats which had been so anxious to investigate every possible hole or tunnel that they had blundered into the cunningly prepared trap in a drainpipe. Sooner or later, this particular stoat will probably join them and lose its black-tipped tail; every tail means vermin money.

T.A.C.