Man-Weasel (Part One)

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

“What do you mean by 'man-weasel'?” Joan said to her flustered husband. “You're not making any sense, love. Do you mean a mixture of man and weasel, like a werewolf? I've never heard of such a thing, but if you remind me this evening I'll check that local folklore site I found on the internet, there's a lot of interesting stuff on there that I've never come across before.” She looked Lloyd in the eye to make sure he wasn't playing one of his occasional practical jokes, but his expression was gravely serious. “Sit down, for Christ's sake, I've made you a nice strong coffee and I'm putting a drop of brandy in it, purely for medicinal purposes, of course.”

“I'm trying to describe what I saw, Joan,” Lloyd said, his hands shaking enough to spill coffee on his coat as he sipped from the mug. “From a distance it looked like a polecat or a Pine marten, and it ran with a sinuous up and down motion just like the stoats and weasels we see around the place – weasels have elongated bodies so that they can hunt in narrow burrows, their spines are incredibly flexible and they can turn on a sixpence. It was none of those things, though, it was way too big and it was an odd yellowish brown colour with a black tipped tail. I reckon the bugger was four feet long, nearer five including the tail, and that's too big for an otter, never mind a polecat.

I know my wildlife, kid, and the animal's legs were too long for any native members of the weasel family. From the side it looked a bit like the mongooses – is it mongooses or mongeese? - on that David Attenborough documentary we watched a couple of weeks back, but I've seen those things at the zoo and they're only as big as a good sized hob ferret. I know it sounds ridiculous, but this was no ordinary animal. It had naked, oversized hands rather than front paws and a face like a..... it had a mostly hairless face like a mixture of animal and human, I swear, and when it ran into the barn and hid amongst the straw bales it was whistling a bloody tune!”

“What tune?”

“I don't know, it was a piece of classical music, something that everybody's heard but only classical music buffs could name – you'd recognise it straight away, I reckon. Look, I can't sit here yapping all day, I have to have another scout around the farm to see if I can find the creature. I don't know if it's a danger to the livestock; judging from what I've seen of its behaviour it isn't, but I can't afford to take any chances because as well as the ducks and chickens I have forty odd broody bantams sitting rare breed fowl eggs.

Whatever we're up against it's clever, I've been chasing the damned thing all round the Wrekin for well over an hour, but however canny I am it always proves more cunning and it keeps giving me the slip.....

You know the oddest thing of all? It scuttled across the yard straight through the fowl, and they parted without batting an eyelid as if it was one of our cats or dogs. And then Paddy came out of his kennel and stood there watching the thing and wagging his tail as if it was his best buddy – if it was any ordinary wild animal he'd have killed it, no messing, he hates stoats and weasels because they're as fast as lightning and they usually give him a nip or two before he crushes them. A bit later the animal slipped under the gate and ran off into the bottom pasture towards the brook. I would have had a clear shot at it, but the sly fucker ran under the legs of the cattle as if it knew it'd be safe there. The cows behaved the same way as the fowl, they acted as if they were used to the beast and they seemed to know that it didn't mean them any harm.”

“Sometimes our eyes play tricks on us, Lloyd,” Joan said, guessing that she was treading on eggshells. “We think we know what we're looking at, but it's easy for our brains to misread the information our eyes take in. A couple of years back a pair of coppers on patrol called out a helicopter and an armed unit because they said they'd spotted a young tiger. They swore that the creature was looking at them, but it turned out to be a stuffed toy – the story was all over the news, and I bet the poor sods that raised the alarm never lived it down.

A similar thing happened to me a while back, remember? I was walking the dogs in Bladen's wood and I saw what I was convinced was a baboon sitting in a Horse chestnut tree looking down at me, but when the wind changed direction I could see that it was a ragged old plastic bag tangled around the branches inflating and deflating with air; I saw the basic shape of a big monkey, and my imagination filled in the missing details.”

“You don't believe me.”

“It's not that I don't believe you, Lloyd, it's just that -”

“I'm not imagining things and it's not a case of mistaken identity, OK? And it definitely wasn't a plastic bag. I saw a huge yellow furred ferret with half human features, I saw it close up on a couple of occasions, it was unspeakably ugly and I won't rest until I fill the bastard full of buckshot and hang it on the barn door! I'm going for another walk around the farm, and I'd like you to come with me, you need to see this thing. No, I'll rephrase that – I need you to see it. I've got a feeling that it'll take a priest to shift it though, not a bloody shotgun.....”