Weasel (version 1)

A weasel is wild. Who knows what he thinks? He sleeps in his underground den, his tail draped over his nose. Outside, he stalks rabbits, mice, muskrats, and birds, killing more bodies than he can eat warm, and often dragging the carcasses home. Obedient to instinct, he bites his prey at the neck, either splitting the jugular vein at the throat or crunching the brain at the base of the skull, and he does not let go. Once, a man shot an eagle out of the sky. He examined the eagle and found the dry skull of a weasel fixed by the jaws to his throat. The supposition is that the eagle had pounced on the weasel and the weasel swiveled and bit as instinct taught him, tooth to neck, and nearly won. What does a weasel think about? He won't say. His journal is tracks in clay, a spray of feathers, mouse blood and bone. A weasel lives as he’s meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.