Well, Mr. Armstrong had fun with the mix-up. He seems rather an odd bird.
For some reason all his papers are in the custody of Brigham Young University. Whilst this harks back to the great days of American Universities — quite generously — trousering the entire papers of ‘Great Authors’, I hope in this case they didn’t get his soul as well.
My phone wallpaper.
Mine looks better. Its not all fancied up with quotes. 
A weasel can do what it wants to do and that’s what it’s gonna do.
It doesn’t care about its bad reputation.
Oh, no.
Weasels mainly get their bad reputation from the ones in congress.
zappa and the mothers of invention… too many years ago
Ferret legging was the subject of this thread back in 2003. In a long post, I concluded that all reports of it then could be traced back to this Donald Katz article from 1983 (which was only partially available online at the time) and that everything else was basically urban legend garbled retellings of it, usually implying a more recent date. I concluded:
This mention’s however prompted me to have another dig, largely to see what’s changed since 2003. One big change is that Katz’s full article is now online, either at gnoitall’s link or at Outside magazine itself. (They did a follow-up article in 2012, but that doesn’t really help.)
Another is that there was no Wikipedia article on the subject back then, but there is now. This is, however, a classic example of Wikipedia contributors being a bit credulous, but it gets interesting if you follow the links to the original sources. For I think we can offer a speculative reconstruction of the story before Katz in 1983.
The earliest reference to Reg Mellor seems to be an appearance in a 1976 Yorkshire TV documentary It’s No Joke Living in Barnsley. This appears to have been online at some point, but not any more. Presented by Brian Glover, it was evidently a one-off collection of human interest stories about people living in the town. He appears to have interviewed Mellor as one of these and got a brief demonstration of him shoving a ferret down his trousers.
The documentary is mentioned in a Times news article by Ronald Kershaw on 31st December 1980. (The Times has all its past content back to 1785 online, but behind a paywall.) This gives a vague account of “the ancient sport of ferret-legging”. In the vein of “It is reasonable to assume that ferret-legging has been in existence since the creatures were discovered to be the swiftest and most silent way of securing for the pot one of the local squire’s rabbits.” This is all intro to the second half of the story that has the news hook that Mellor claims a (non-Guinness recognised) world record of just over five hours and has publically bet £100 against anybody else who thinks they can beat this. There’s evidently no organised championships, because this is something Mellor claims to want to organise in future. There’s also no suggestion that the beast spent the five hours clamped to his genitals either, but this is the pre-Murdoch Times. Frankly, the whole article smacks of Kershaw getting a nice wee story by just credulously repeating Mellor’s own PR.
There then this article from a Florida newspaper in September 1981 about how he’s planning to come out of retirement for one last, umm, bout. His record’s now 5 hours and 26 minutes and we get the story of the stage being dismantled, but there’s no suggestion that there were any other competitors. While I doubt The Lakeland Ledger spoke to him themselves, Mellor is again the only source quoted in the article.
The key missing link to Katz is another Times article, this time from 31st March 1983. Called “Hob and Jill make a comeback”, it’s by Geoffrey Wansall in a column titled “Modern Times: A sideways look at the British way of life”. A general discussion of ferrets, it includes a paragraph on Mellor, who’s now “the acknowledged world champion” and we again get the story about the stage being dismantled as he sets a record of 5 hours and 26 minutes. From the details, it’s pretty clear that Katz saw this article, recognised a possible longer story and set out to Barnsley to track down Mellor.
I haven’t looked more widely, but I suspect the underlying pattern is that in the period 1976-83 one man was claiming to journalists or film crews that there was an ancient sport of ferret legging and that he was its record breaking champion. None of these reporters actually saw him do anything more than put a tame ferret or two briefly into his trousers. Katz’s story then went viral with the spread of the internet and everybody since has been spreading mutations of it.
Wikipedia does note attempts to “revive the sport” in recent decades. But much of that is along the lines of “well, we’ll host the event if we can find any volunteers”.
If Mr. Mellor was born in 1911, as the original article says, then I am prepared to offer long odds he is no longer performing this sport.
They’re not quotes they’re weasel claw marks…
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us
from the animals. Except the weasel.
– Homer Simpson
Oh…after that latest competition you should see what the little bastards did to my “balls”.
People have been keeping chickens for a very long time. If weasels attack chickens, it’s not too surprising that they might get a bad reputation among poultry farmers. If it’s hard to keep weasels out of your chicken coop, it’s not difficult to see how they might get a reputation for being sly and cunning.
Ferrets have also been domesticated for a long time. They were useful for hunting rabbits and rodents. That usefulness probably helped their reputation, even if they might sometimes attack chickens. In England, a law was passed in 1390 limiting the use of hunting ferrets to the relatively wealthy. Being associated with wealthy people doesn’t hurt the reputation of most domestic animals.
I believe I have told this one before, in some other context, but …
Weasels really do go “pop.”
A friend claimed there was a ferret in his yard, up in a tree, and wanted to catch it. I grabbed a dip net and a ladder and went to do so. When I got there, I identified it as a weasel, but decided to proceed anyway. :dubious:
I actually managed to net the weasel, whereupon it emitted a “pop” noise and a cloud of noxious fumes. :eek: The weasel, my friend, and I all fled the area in radial directions. So it escaped not one, but two primates.
I had forgotten that the skunk is a member of the weasel family, or perhaps more accurately, the weasel is a member of the skunk family. :smack:
Since that time, I have observed a number of weasels in the wild, but have maintained a strict policy of non-interferance. :rolleyes:
To be [del]pedantic[/del] taxonomic about it, skunks used to be considered mustelids, but are now in a separate family, Mephitidae:
Also watch this video. Explains how good at hunting weasels are.
They are from the same family, Mustelids. Here’s wikipedia on “weasel”.
So, according to American and technical usage, ferrets are weasels.
Honey badgers and wolverines are from the same family, Mustelidae. They are different subfamilies, but essentially they are weasels - giant weasels. Both are large, predatory, and known to chase larger predators away from their kills - honey badgers with lions, wolverines with bears. Both are ferocious when confronted.
Honey badgers have the pop press cycle on their side, but wolverines are typically larger. Adult male wolverines can be twice the weight (71 lbs for wolverines, versus 35 lbs for honey badgers).
I’d say neither would like the other, but wolverines would be the more likely winner of any confrontation.
Also, wolverines live in northern Asia (Siberia) as well as America, so it’s not an ocean between them, just large expanse of continent (honey badgers have made it into Asia).
First I’ve heard of that. It hasn’t made it to their popular reputation yet, so yes, sea otters have a cute and cuddly image without the stygma of mass murder of chickens and other poultry, or rabbits for that matter.
Well, you know that old saying about weasels and balls,
" When weasels do cavort with balls, a good time will be had by most…"
It is possible I may have made that up…
“A weasel looks like a hotdog with legs” said a guy who kept bluebird houses and was occasionally plagued by weasels. So maybe it’s the confusion between predatory animals and junk food that is the problem.
Also, concerning basilisks and other animals, I once tried to write a message about my cockatiels and the spell-check on windows insisted that there was no such thing as a cockatiel, instead I had cockatrices.
Quite cheap to care and feed, but I would advise some dark shades when petting.
No, but, I can tell you anyhow
I’d rather see than be one.
And weasels are weasely distinguishable from stoats, which are stoataly different.