Hey, hey! I don’t know Michael Whelan actually, but I did look him up while on the phone yesterday. Which by the by, sorry I am getting back to you late. I was on an epic quest with my mama searching for a lost 30+ year old game. Didn’t find it, but she was happy by the end, so that was nice. Oh hey, now that I am having a look I wonder if this is the guy a former roommate told us (my partner and I) about when I was drawing a fantasy image one time. Cause he kinda looks like it. You know, I will tell you I am absolutely awful at backgrounds. To this day, I wish I were better. Scenery is ??? an abstract idealism to me. Even with that picture, was hard for me to push through. I wish I could get stronger with it - and it’s something that I swore to myself I would do.

I personally think that mustelids are the coolest guys around, and thanks for asking about them. I have three little blubs, and they’re my sweet babies. They’re carnivores, not rodents - which a lot of folks get twisted. In fact, they eat rodents, which was a fun thing to see in the wild this year - as I looked outside and watched a small weasel speed its way past my door with a dead curled up mouse in its mouth. They’ve actually got the smallest mammalian carnivore in their order, and they contain some really cool relations including otters and badgers.

While I love them, they are an invasive species in some locations, as they’re obligate carnivores that are opportunistic eaters. Colonist in attempts to keep down certain populations (such as rats in Hawaii and rabbits in New Zealand) ended up disrupting the ecosystem and as these places have a lot of ground-birds the weasels they introduced just decimated the population. But in all honesty, they will eat anything they can take down. Which might not be much as most are solitary, but they have also been known to be quite vicious when paired (which can be known as a boogle or a buisness).

I love the fact that most weasels tend to mate for life, forming bonded-pairs. Which is unfortunately a double-edged sword for domesticated babes, because one will kill themselves with depression if their other passes. Which I have seen first hand, and no amount of love tend to bring them back. Another interesting fact is that they tend to be diurnal - and typically hunt at dawn and dusk. Although some can be nocturnal. Their coats change with the seasons, which can include changing colors or growing thicker or thinner. I believe the lot tend to shed bi-annually. But I could be wrong on that one. As I can’t imagine a honey badger doing so. But I haven’t looked into it exclusively.

Outside of that we’ve been domesticating them for ~2,000 years. WWI veterans kept them in their bags as what I’d like to think of as emotional support animals. If you bag train a babe, you can take them around and they just chill with you. But they are for sure an exotic pet. They’re very high maintenance and I would explicitly recommend them for individuals who can support the lifestyle they need and are absolutely obsessed (like, yo!) Otherwise I would recommend something simpler like a dog or a cat.

We’ve got our litter trained, and they are free roaming. But we have to keep the house a pretty brisk temperature because they can’t go over a certain temp or they can heat stroke out. I am not sure how well a majority of them are going to fair with global warming. One of DaVinci’s six (I mean not actually six, but he doesn’t have an excessive painting catalogue and tended to linger on paintings for extended periods of time) was Lady with an Ermine which looks like one of my bebs! But it always geeks me out, by the by I believe the ermine was added later to the painting, but I don’t really remember the ins and outs of it. Speaking of which, these guys are long - have slinky bodies which are great for tunneling. And they are both predator and prey. You should have a look at the weasel war dance because it’s pretty funny =)! They also make hilarious noises, that a fellow fur-mom describes as “chicken noises.”

Idk if that was enough, but it’s all that came from la cabeza real stream of conciousness style =P!

Eitehr way, cheers, and I hope you go and watch some really cute fur-boy videos and cool conservationist docs. p.s. - I joke that once we were all weasels because look at the first mammal.