Nasty title, but it comes from Monty Python’s “Holy Grail” movie. It was funny at the time. Last year a stoat/ermine lived beneath our empty hot tub for a couple of months.
He was so darned cute.
Well, we saw him bring a dead mouse by and leave it for a few moments because Zoe flustered him behind the glass doors. The story is that our neighbors fired their hot tub maintenance man because he raised his prices so they hired a new person. The new maintenance person kept finding rats and other critters in the hot tub. The owners, who don’t live here, thought the old maintenance guy was sabotaging their hot tub by putting dead stuff in there.
A couple of months ago we met the owner and pieced together the real story. The stoat/ermine was living in our hot tub and keeping his extra prey a few feet away, and the old maintenance guy was re-hired on our recommendation.
And no, thank you, I don’t want a recipe for par-boiled two week-old rat, nor will I give you one. We told a real cowboy that story and he liked it. Cheers, Dee
Cooking with Dee 
Guess who showed up this morning? A baby stoat/ermine. Smaller than last year’s. Running across the deck and driving Zoe (our dog) absolutely nuts. She didn’t even want to go out this morning! She patrolled the downstairs slider for several hours until she got too tired to do so.
It’s the first day so they’re not interacting yet (through glass, yes we must make sure of that or one of them will die) so I haven’t been able to take a photo. It hasn’t found the hot tub yet.
We told a neighbor this morning that it looks like a baby stoat is calling our deck “home.” She asked, “on purpose?” No way. We tried in vain to trap last year’s once I found out how dangerous they were. Too darned smart. We’ll just see what happens and hopefully the 6 oz. critter won’t kill our dog. Dee