The weasel ran up my leg and chest and could have killed me!

Long-tailed_Weasel250Sitting on the ground one November afternoon, leaning up against a big pine tree, I was anticipating a deer coming out of a bedding area nearby, when I spotted a weasel dashing back and forth about 40 yards away. Suddenly, the weasel turned towards me and sprinted in my direction.

And before I could react, he raced up my leg and chest, where he stopped to assess the situation. Weasels are killing machines, and I thought later that if he’d bitten my neck, I could have died. Fortunately, he decided I was not the pine tree he expected and he jumped from my chest and took off.

Bob Duchesne, in a presentation to this year’s annual meeting of the Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine, reported that a national study found that 57 percent of Mainers enjoy watching wildlife, more than the citizens of any other state. The percentage surprised me, because don’t we all love to see our state’s wild critters? Well, I guess not when they are running up your leg and chest!

I’ve probably had more encounters with wildlife than many folks, given the time I spend outdoors, in the woods, and on the waters of our state. For the next five Mondays, I’ll post stories about some of my more memorable encounters.

Racoons

When I told Linda this morning that I was writing this column, she noted that, “There’s something to be said for sitting here by our picture window every morning watching the birds. You learn a lot.” And she’s right about that, but her statement reminded me of the time she got aggravated when a raccoon slid up the metal pole holding one of her feeders and cleaned it out every night.

So one afternoon, she went out and sprayed the pole with Pam. About an hour after dark that night, we spotted the raccoon approaching the house. Standing at the kitchen window, we watched as the coon climbed a short ways up the pole, then slid back down. He repeated that four times, then stood on the ground and turned toward us as if to say, “Now, what did you do?” As he sauntered back across the lawn towards the woods, I could almost feel his disappointment.

One sunny Saturday morning, I opened the bulkhead door to air out the cellar. A bit later, heading out of the cellar up the bulkhead’s steps, I met a huge raccoon coming down the steps. We had a stare down, and he eventually reversed course. I’m not sure what would have happened if he’d continued down the steps. And then there is the night I awoke to a terrible ruckus directly below my pillow, under the floor. Turned out to be mating raccoons.

We were camping in British Columbia one time, all alone in a roadside camping area, when Linda woke me up to say someone was stealing our gas. I listened intently, from the pop-up bed in our VW camper, and then climbed down into the front of the vehicle, carefully pulling the curtain aside.

And there, on our bumper, was three baby raccoons. The mother was nearby, digging stuff out of a garbage can. I motioned to Linda to come down and join me, and she got quite a kick out of those baby coons. Stealing our gas, indeed!

Foxes

Before we contracted with Modern Pest Management for boxes of poison that substantially reduced the number of mice living with us, I would catch them and toss them into the bushes beside the house. After a while, I noticed that a fox, on a regular basis, would emerge from the woods and trot right over to that spot where I was tossing the mice.

We had a tame fox at camp one summer. He’d come around on a regular basis, and hang out with us. And at home one year, a fox would often climb up and lay in the bench beside our front door. Sometimes we’d drive in and spot the fox, snoozing there.

Coyotes

Coyotes are a controversial critter, for sure, especially with deer hunters who know that coyotes kill a lot of deer. But they can also be very entertaining. I see them every so often in and around my woodlot, and hear them howling at night.

There’s a bunch of big boulders on my neighbor’s woodlot, where porcupines typically gathered, but one fall I found a dead coyote laying in one of the holes under the boulder. I’ve no idea what killed the coyote.

Up at our northwoods camp, son Josh spotted a coyote in the yard one time, circling our fire pit. We went out and the coyote trotted away, but stopped about 50 yards from us and turned to stare at us. Clearly, it wasn’t happy. We poked into tall grass that surrounded the fire pit and was surprised to find a baby rabbit hidden there. Now we knew what the coyote was after. There wasn’t much we could do about that, and the next time we got up to camp, the baby rabbit was gone. We could only hope it had somehow escaped.

Dad, Harry Vanderweide, and I were sitting in the dark one early morning in Windsor, calling to turkeys in the nearby trees, when we were surprised by a coyote that jumped out of the nearby brush and right onto one of our turkey decoys. He didn’t stay around long, figuring out quickly that the decoy was not going to be anything he wanted to eat. This actually happened twice that year.

One spring I was sitting behind a rock wall with my turkey decoys out in front of me in a field, when I spotted a beautiful golden-coated coyote trotting down the field toward my decoys. He circled the decoys, realizing they weren’t real turkeys, and then trotted back up the field and into the woods. I made the mistake of writing about this in my outdoor news blog, and got roasted by some readers for not shooting the coyote.

Skunks

Skunks dig up our lawn on a regular basis, and I don’t mess with them unless they become a real nuisance. One evening we came home and found our cat at the front door, dripping some kind of liquid from his face. And it wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened to him. What a stench! He’d gotten blasted right in the face by a skunk. That might be why he won’t go out at night anymore!

I know just how he felt. Running a bit late for a Selectmen’s meeting one evening years ago, I dashed down the stairs into my workshop without turning on the light. Approaching the door to the garage, I felt our cat move across my feet in front of me and reached down to pet him. Bad mistake.

The skunk blasted me right in the face, and I staggered and started running back upstairs, shedding my stinking clothing along the way before jumping into the shower. Linda later collected the clothing and threw it away. Eventually I got to the Selectmen’s meeting. No one sat near me.

Up Next

In my next Wildlife Watching column, posted next Monday, I’ll tell you about encounters with bears, beaver, and bobcats.

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.