Never Tease a Weasel

By Jean Conder Soule

Illustrated by Denman Hampson

Copyright 1964

Just last week I was browsing through the vintage section at a local used book store.  When I came across this picture book, the memories instantly flooded in.  I haven’t seen this book in probably 40 years, yet I smiled at the memory of it.

Never tease a weasel – surely good advice!  This is a be kind to animals lesson that is so much fun with its humor and rhymes that you don’t even realize there is a moral inside.

First the author gives examples of good deeds – 

                You can knit a kitten mittens

                And perhaps that cat would purr.

                You could fit a fox with socks

                That exactly matched his fur.

These good deeds are then always followed with the admonition –

                But never tease a weasel;

                This is very good advice.

                A weasel will not like it

                And teasing isn’t nice.

The drawings are wonderful with the slightly confused looks on the faces of the animals that are on the receiving end of so-called kindnesses.  But the point isn’t to actually encourage children to “give a mule a pool and some jaunty swimming trunks.”  Instead, it is to confirm that it is much more fun to be friends with animals (and other people) than it is to tease them!