Weasels

Weasels are mammals of the genus Mustela of the family Mustelidae. Weasels feed on small mammals and have from time to time been considered vermin because some species took poultry from farms or rabbits from commercial warrens. They do, on the other hand, eat large numbers of rodents. Their range spans Europe, North America, much of Asia and South America, and North Africa.

Quotes

• Fair was this yonge wyf, and ther-with-al
  As any wesele hir body gent and smal.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Milleres Tale" (c. 1380s)

• Night-wand’ring weasels shriek to see him there;
  They fright him, yet he still pursues his fear.
  • William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece (1594)

• A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen
  As you are toss’d with.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1 (c. 1597), act 2, sc. 3 (Lady Percy)

• For once the eagle England being in prey,
  To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot
  Comes sneaking and so sucks her princely eggs.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), act 1, sc. 2 (Westmorland)

• I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs.
  • William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c. 1599), act 2, sc. 5 (Jaques)

• As quarrelous as the weasel.
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (c. 1611), act 3, sc. 4 (Pisanio)

• “Weasels—and stoats—and foxes—and so on. They’re all right in a way—I’m very good friends with them—pass the time of day when we meet, and all that—but they break out sometimes, there’s no denying it, and then—well, you can’t really trust them, and that’s the fact.”
  • Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908), ch. 1