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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Life with weasels

Ely couple built a career around wildlife research and education

Keith Vandervort
Posted 11/16/16

LY – Ely-area residents Roger and Consie Powell have been together for decades. Not unlike many couples, they put aside their differences and celebrate what they have in common— including a …

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Life with weasels

Ely couple built a career around wildlife research and education

Posted

LY – Ely-area residents Roger and Consie Powell have been together for decades. Not unlike many couples, they put aside their differences and celebrate what they have in common— including a shared love of furry critters. They told their unique story, actually titled, “Five Weasels at Once: A Collaborative Life With All Sorts of Furry Beasts” to a recent gathering of the Ely Tuesday Group.

The Powells recently collaborated on a book, “Mammals of the Northwoods,” that is part of a series of guidebooks on the natural world in this part of the United States.

“Whether or not we are qualified enough to be part of such a project is yet to be seen,” Consie said, “but we have had a lot of time hanging out with mammals in our life.”

The couple met while attending Carlton College in Northfield. “It was pretty clear that we were a match,” she said. She related a clue to what sort of life was ahead for them when, in their senior year, Roger found a road kill skunk and announced he was going to make a “study skin” for educational purposes.

“It was a smelly endeavor to say the least. The crazy part was when he asked for my help, I agreed,” Consie said. “We’ve been stuck in this mammal thing for a pretty long time and we seem to click.”

After exchanging marriage vows, the couple relocated to the Rocky Mountains for several years’ worth of summers where Roger was studying marmots and the influence of coyote predation on the large, heavily-built burrowing rodent. “I spent a lot of time looking for coyotes, which is hard to do when they don’t want to be seen,” Roger said.

Their life experience with weasels began that first summer when a mother weasel brought her litter above the ground. “When that momma weasel brought up that litter of babies, it was pretty exciting for everybody at the field station,” Consie said. “I had never seen a weasel before and what love at first sight. I was smitten.”

Consie used her time to learn as much as she could about the little mammals. She live-trapped a juvenile weasel and nurtured it and observed its behaviors. “He was wild. He was very much an energetic little weasel and had no qualms about climbing all over us because he did not consider us a threat,” she said. “He vocalized what sounded like ‘zeet.’” She learned about many weasel behaviors, including how they dispatched their prey – quick bite to the back of the neck.

When they returned to the Chicago area after that summer to continue their graduate school studies, their new friend, named “Lou” went with them. “We kept him in a room with large windows and he actually went through his natural cycle of molting where his brown fur in the summer gradually turned to white winter fur,” she said. “It was quite interesting to photograph and document that life cycle.”

Consie was working on an advanced degree in education and chose to do an analysis of predator-prey relationships in children’s literature. “I spent time with lots of kids’ books,” she said, noting that she ultimately published her work.

Roger continued his research and they moved to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he studied fishers, one of the larger members of the weasel family, known as the Mustelids. “Their prey is mostly snowshoe hare and porcupines,” Roger said. “They are specialists on killing porcupines and their killing pattern is very similar to a weasel.”

While conducting fisher research, Roger turned again to the weasel. “We had all three North American weasel species in the U.P., the long-tailed, short-tail and least weasel,” he said.

The coloring of weasels (they have a black tip on the end of their tail) led to still more predator-prey research with hawks and that color contrast of the white fur and the black-tipped tail.

The Powells continued their travels around the United States to research mammals, and spent time in the Apostle Islands doing more weasel research. In the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina, Roger spent many years researching black bears.

“While that was going on, another weasel entered our lives,” Consie said. “A researcher who was studying voles in apple orchards had live-trapped a least weasel which ended up with us. We named him Kim. He joined our household as an adult.”

Some extra weasels from the Minnesota Zoo also found their way to the Powells’ strange zoo. “They had more than they could display and were willing to give us a brother and sister, we named Carlo and Sylvia.” That brought our number up to three little critters.”

As luck would have it, Sylvia was bred before she came into the Powells’ lives. “Sylvia gave us two baby girl weasels, Samantha and Raja. So there it is. We have five weasels at once.”

Roger and Consie have a daughter named Virginia, who now also has a daughter. “As luck would have it, our daughter and granddaughter both love animals, I don’t know how that happened,” she said.

Roger continues his research on fishers, currently in California. Consie continues to write and illustrate children’s books. And they continue to raise their weasels.