***
After breakfast, Joe and Sheridan put the remaining pancakes and bacon into a sack and went outside into the backyard. They walked around the house and sat in two lawn chairs facing the back of the garage. The morning had become warm, and the sun was out. Yesterday's snow was already melting. Muscular rivulets of runoff rushed down the Sandrock draw.
Sheridan broke off pieces of the pancakes and bacon and scattered them on the ground near the foundation of the garage. Joe cut up a couple of small chunks of meat from the haunch of a road killed cow elk he had stored in the freezer and tossed them out. It didn't take long for the Miller's weasels to zip out of their den and clean up the food. Joe and Sheridan exchanged conspiratorial smiles while they watched.
There was a good reason why the Miller's weasels had moved from the woodpile to the roomy cavern beneath the garage. It turned out that, while Sheridan had been right about Lucky being a male and Hippity-Hop being a female, she was wrong about their 'son,' Elway. This spring, Elway had produced 10 babies (Joe had learned from the biologists in the canyon that the young were called 'kits'), and eight had survived.
The kits were fascinating to watch because, although they were a quarter the size of their parents, they were just as fast when they shot out from beneath the foundation, grabbed food in their forepaws, and flashed back into the den.
When Joe pointed a flashlight into the den, the weasels were a mass of writhing, chirping, long, brown bodies equally annoyed at the intrusion. The kits would sometimes come out into the sun and try to stand on their hind legs like their parents, and Joe and Sheridan would laugh as the kits would lose their balance, fall over, and scramble upright again until they could hold the famous pose.
'They're getting big,' Sheridan said, nodding at the kits and tossing small pieces of food.
'Yes they are,' Joe replied.
'Dad, what do you suppose would happen if anyone found out about these little guys?' Sheridan asked. He could tell she had been contemplating the question for a while. Joe had been amazed when Sheridan told him the entire story about the weasels, and she and Joe had promised each other not to tell anyone. As far as anyone knew, the Miller's weasels that Ote Keeley had brought down the mountain with him had died in the woodpile fire, just as Wacey said they had.
'Well, I don't know for sure,' Joe answered. 'I'm pretty certain that what we're doing isn't legally the right thing. There's some biologists who would go berserk if they found out. A lot of other people, too.'
'But aren't they the people who are at the colonies where the Miller's weasels keep dying?' Sheridan asked.
Joe chuckled. 'That's them,' Joe said.
Sheridan dutifully scattered the remains of the food near the den.
'You're doing this for me, aren't you?' Sheridan asked.
Joe nodded. 'Yup.'
Sheridan settled back into the lawn chair. 'You know, Dad, these critters remind me of our family,' Sheridan said. 'They were in great danger, and now they're doing okay. They're a family again.'
Joe nodded. This was the kind of conversation that made him uncomfortable.
'We're sort of like them, aren't we, Dad?'
Joe reached over and squeezed Sheridan's hand. 'Sheridan, sometimes we see things in animals that aren't really there. It's called transference, if that makes any sense.'
Sheridan was studying him now. 'That's okay, isn't it?' she asked.
'As long as we admit it to ourselves, I think it's okay,' Joe said. 'It hink there are a lot of people who say they do things for animals when they're really doing it for themselves. They see things in animals that might not really be there. I think sometimes that hurts the animals in the end, and it hurts other people, too.'
Sheridan thought it over. 'Transference,' she repeated.
'There are people on both sides of the issue who think animals are more valuable than people are,' Joe said. 'That's what's happening here.'
Joe stopped speaking. He thought maybe he had said too much.
Joe was well aware of the fact that by keeping the Miller's weasels and not reporting their existence, he was breaking more regulations and laws than he could count. And he knew that what he was planning to do with the creatures could probably land him in a federal prison. He could be accused of playing God.
It could be construed as scandalous behavior by the Defenders of Nature-an offense worthy of at least a death sentence. He didn't try to justify his reasons, even to himself. He was playing God, after all. He was making a judgment simply because he thought it was the right one, and one that might somehow benefit his daughter.
'How long can we do this?' Sheridan asked. 'Help the Miller's weasels, I mean.'
'As long as you want to,' Joe said. 'As long as you feel it's important to you.'
'They might be ready in a couple of weeks,' Sheridan said, holding back a tear.
She was admitting something. 'We probably won't have any snow after that.'
Joe told her about where he would want to transplant the animals. He had found a small, protected valley high in the Bighorns miles away from roads or trails.
The valley lay in a natural elk migration route, and it was filled with mule deer. It was about 10 miles from the perimeter of the Miller's Weasel Ecosystem.
She sniffed and asked him if she would ever see them again.
'This summer,' Joe promised, 'you and I will put the panniers on Lizzie, and we'll horse pack into the mountains together. I'll take you to where the weasels are if you promise never to tell anyone about it.'
