Houdini the Weasel

"Houdini" the Weasel

For those that follow our "British Wildlife Centre" Facebook page, you may have seen our new cover star for our 2017 leaflet. "Houdini" the weasel. The office selected the above photo to grace the front of the leaflet for next year, and I was particularly pleased to see on elf our less known animals make the call!

Weasels are such amazing animals, our smallest carnivore in this country... it is said that a female weasel could fit through a wedding ring, and this is probably true... but I would have to say it would need to be a small weasel and a big wedding ring.

One thing I always use to try and explain to people the size of a weasel, is a comparison to a pack of Polos. A female weasel is about the same size. I must try and get a photograph of one of our weasels next to a pack at some pout to illustrate this.

Our cover star, and indeed the weasel in all these photographs, is Houdini. She is a real beauty, but sadly no longer with us having passed away earlier this year to old age. She was a rescue who came to us with out a tail. Having been rescued, she was too tame to release, and so I sent a dear friend of mine "Robin" to collect her from the midlands where she was found. This is the beginning of where her name came from...

You see, I was often asked "is she called Houdini because she escapes a lot?" And the truth is she never escaped once while she was here. Robin however did have an interesting car journey home.

When he arrived back to the Centre, we checked the cage she Houdini was supposed to be in, and she was no where to be found. Bemused, we kept searching, and then from the corner of my eye I saw some movement out of a small hole in another box that was in the back of the car. Keeping a close watch, a few seconds later, Houdini popped her head out of the hole again. During her trip down south, she had managed to get out of her cage, and find a much more suitable box to travel in :-)

I don't have too many photographs of our weasels, they are extremely quick and fast, but you can see a couple of different poses in this post. My favourite is the second picture in this post, a classic portrait which you all know I like, and in the grass which really shows her scale and how small weasels really are.

Thanks for looking :-)