The story about why I chose weasels is a rather complicated one. As a matter of fact this is the very first animal I had an idea for in the book, though it was not the first picture I drew or first poem created. In the months before I had the idea for making a book my college friends and I would often do an acting game together where we told a story, and my character ended up with a pet weasel, which I also sometimes played. In order to get a better understanding of how weasels worked, I researched them. When I found out about the “weasel war dance” they do when happy or excited (and is probably the origin of the phrase “pop goes the weasel”) I got really excited about them and decided they were going to be added to my long list of favorite animals. The weasel war dance goes like this: When the weasel is excited, particularly when hunting, they will begin a series of reckless hops and flips while making a popping or clucking noise often pronounced, “Dook dook”. This is used to disorient prey though in domestic species such as ferrets it’s also a sign of happiness. The term weasel originally only referred to what is now known as the least weasel, but now refers to any species of stoat, ferret, polecat, etc, in the Mustela genus. Weasels generally have brown coats with white bellies in summer, and in places with snowy winters they tend to turn white as temperatures fall. All weasels eat rodents and birds, as they are able to follow their prey into tiny burrows.
This made me wonder what other animals were just waiting to be on my favorite animals list if I just found out a little bit more about them! That is why this animal is on the cover.
Cites:
“Weasel.” Wikipedia, 26 Nov. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel. Accessed 30 Nov. 2020.
My Favorite Animals ABC 