The author of Living Like Weasels, Annie Dillard, describes the nature of a weasel, and how people should have a similar nature to a weasel. Dillard notes that a weasel is wild, sleeps underground for days without leaving, and has an unpredictable thought process. It will stalk small mammals (killing too many bodies than it plans to eat), and will, following its instinct, bite its prey at the neck (splitting veins) or attack the base of the skull (crunching at the brain) and refuses to let go. One particular naturalist refused to kill a weasel he could not pry from his hand deeply; he had to walk to a water source nearby, and drown it off from his hand.
Ernest Thompson Seton remembers an eagle was shot out of the sky with the bones of a weasel fixed by the
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She came to Hollins Pond to forget about the troubles of life, instead of learning how to live. How can one learn how to live from a wild animal, however? Should she stalk and suck blood from her prey? Hold her tail high? Live underground for days upon end? Instead, she should learn something about living without bias or motive, and living in the physical world. The weasel lives in necessity, and humans live in choice, hating necessity when brought up. Dillard would like to live as a weasel does by noticing everything around her, yet remembering nothing, and live in the moment.
She missed her chance, and should have gone for the weasel’s throat. She should have held on to its throat, never letting go through the mud and rose-bush. They could have lived under the wild rose-bush and could ‘calmly go wild’. She could have lived two days underground in her den. This is where she can go back to her senses, in the wild. Muteness, however, is a ‘giddy fast’, where time is simply unregarded. Dillard wonders if two could live underneath the rose-bush, explore by the pond, so the mind is smooth in the