A Tragedy in Mid-Air

The weazel is a dainty and luxurious liver, in his way, says the Houston Post. He steals the freshest eggs, selects the tenderest chickens of the brood, and will sometimes kill several for a single meal, sucking the warm blood and eating only a small portion of the flesh. He is not only sly and cunning, but remarkably courageous. He will often attack an enemy much larger and stronger than himself, and he does not lose his wits even in imminent peril. This heroic quality is sometimes strikingly evinced. Two farmers in Titus County, Texas, were eating their midday meal, when they noticed a large hawk circling in the sky overhead. He was gradually narrowing his circles while approaching the ground, and it was apparent that he would soon drop upon his victim. The men looked about cautiously, without movement or noise, and presently discovered a weasel stretched out upon the warm side of a log, not far away, probably sunning himself after a long morning’s sleep, for the weasel does his sleeping in the daytime and his work at night. But the weasel quietly blinked at the sun, either unconscious of the danger or indifferent to it. The farmers had just made this discovery when the hawk came gliding down, swift as an arrow, seized the weazel in his powerful talons and rose again almost perpendicularly. All seemed at an end for that weasel. Soon, however, the movements of the great bird became strange and unnatural. His wings worked rapidly and convulsively, as if making a great effort to sustain flight, then he began to sink, slowly till finally he fell straight like a plummet to the ground–dead! From under the outstretched wings crept the weasel, apparently unharmed. What had happened? The weasel had quickly stretched his long supple neck under the hawk’s wing, stuck his teeth into a vital part and sucked out the life blood. The muscles of the hawk relaxed as the blood was rapidly drained. There was a last desperate effort at flight; the wings flapped uselessly in the air, and the heaviness of death brought him swiftly to the ground, very near the spot where the weasel had been basking in the sun.