Pop! There he was!  I-could-not-believe-my-eyes. I slammed on the brakes and slid to a stop on the empty and snow-packed Antelope Flats Road. The road was like a bobsled run with steep walls created by the National Park’s snowplowing trucks. An ermine! A long or short-tailed weasel that had turned white for the winter, had just popped out of the snow-wall made by the snow plow mid-way up and dropped a good foot-and-a-half onto the road surface. 

 

With just a black tip on his tail and two beady eyes to differentiate him from the snow, this squirming “snow-snake” had a dead gray mouse in his mouth! Now, he was running for the other side of the road with his prey held high, but then…he came upon the 2-foot high, compacted snow-wall on that opposite side. What can a 6-inch long white weasel, with a dead mouse dinner, do facing such an insurmountable obstacle? He was so vulnerable to aerial attack sitting out in the plowed road. I could not believe I was getting to see this! 

 

Immediately he jumped straight up onto the snow-wall only to fall back with his heavy meal. So, he quickly (weasels do everything quickly) set the mouse down on the road and launched himself straight up onto the top of the snow-bank only to turn around and look mournfully back over the edge down onto his precious prey. Down he leapt, picked up the mouse in his mouth, and defiantly lunged back up to whence he had come, but to no avail. Again, and again he lunged, endeavoring to persevere with the strength and agility that only the mink family seems to posses. Finally, he sat in the road defeated. 

 

Or NOT!! Our super-hero was chewing the head off the mouse. Now, loaded with the headless bulk of his kill he was able to leap the tall snow-wall with a single bound! Upon landing he dropped the decapitated mouse at the top of the wall, turned, and leapt back down to retrieve the head. Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, he went subnivean, disappearing beneath the fluffy snow that lay atop the packed snow-wall. 

 

The epic show was over, but I was impressed by how much energy this hyper-active creature expended trying to navigate that barrier and how vulnerable he had made himself to the ever watchful raptors. The text books tell me that if an animal’s habitat becomes fragmented by barriers the ecosystem no longer works as it should and extinctions begin to occur on the remaining habitat islands at a much faster pace and re-colonization by other individuals hindered. Packed snow ….hummmm…a formidable barrier created by us. Too bad I did not have my camera for this outstanding natural history moment. –Tom Segerstrom