A few points from some current research on these all white, black-tipped tail creatures of the Siberian tundra and taiga (I wonder if they can be found in the parallel Canadian clime? I'll ask Tao):
The male reaches maturity at 12 mos. The female at 2 mos. Three to 13 young are born each spring/summer with each 'kit' weighing about 1/2 an ounce. The female takes sole responsibility for raising the young and with the exception of this relationship, she's a solitary creature, as is the male. They make several dens to inhabit rather than one, they're capable of standing upright on their hind legs for lengthy periods, they are fierce hunters and diggers and they're often called a Northern Weasel.
Ermines are emblems of purity, and it is said they would face death rather than soil their pristine coats.
Pet ermines were associated with the aristocracy as a result of their furs being acquired and their representation of chastity and virtue. Queen Elizabeth I (the virgin Queen) was painted by Nicholas Hilliard in 1585 as a figure larger than Jabba the Hut, with a little ermine gazing up at her. The Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo daVinci (1479 I think) is a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, a 17-year-old Milanese woman who was the current Duke's mistress. Of course, she's holding a white ferret rather than an ermine. I'm not an art historian but I s'pose the weasels were all lumped together in the middle ages, and maybe because the ermine is of Russian origin it wasn't differentiated as belonging to its rightful cultural mythology. o, the ever undervalued Slav (ironically this painting is part of the Czartoryskich Museum collection in Krakov).
And Volga, the demigod of Slavonic (pagan Russian) literature, could shift shape from bird to mouse to ermine. This reminds me of Pantalaimon, Lyra Belacqua's daemon (from Phillip Pullman's, The Northern Lights/The Golden Compass, 1995) who often took the form of an ermine while he and Lyra were in the North, curling round her neck to keep her warm.
A daemon (pronounced demon) is a person's soul which lives outside their body and takes an animal form. In childhood one's daemon changes shape to assume all the forms of that person's potential. As one ages her daemon eventually chooses one form that illustrates her nature.
(Charles thinks I'm a bat).
3 comments:
ok don't have to ask tao. they are here FOR SURE. in fact, i used to have a sweet ermine pelt, trapped by kirsten, and given to me when i was a newbie here, fresh from the city, and enthralled with possessing the skin and fur of a dead animal. poor white weasle...don't know where she ended up...i think i gifted her...but they ABOUND in the yukon
i like the alive kind
The ermine is such a cute little creature. I hope people still don't make coats from these little critters 8(
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