Words of Wisdom: "Living Like Weasels" by Annie Dillard

After seeing a weasel for the first time, Annie Dillard tries to put herself in the animal's mind: what would it be like to live by necessity, rather than by choice, as humans do? This essay attempts to make sense of the life of a weasel and to use it to inform our own lives as human beings.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. carcass
    the dead body of an animal
    Outside, he stalks rabbits, mice, muskrats, and birds, killing more bodies than he can eat warm, and often dragging the carcasses home.
  2. instinct
    inborn pattern of behavior often responsive to stimuli
    Obedient to instinct, he bites his prey at the neck, either splitting the jugular vein at the throat or crunching the brain at the base of the skull, and he does not let go.
  3. pry
    move or force in an effort to get something open
    The man could in no way pry the tiny weasel off, and he had to walk half a mile to water, the weasel dangling from his palm, and soak him off like a stubborn label.
  4. supposition
    a hypothesis that is taken for granted
    The supposition is that the eagle had pounced on the weasel and the weasel swiveled and bit as instinct taught him, tooth to neck, and nearly won.
  5. nonchalance
    the trait of remaining calm and seeming not to care
    In winter, brown-and-white steers stand in the middle of it, merely dampening their hooves; from the distant shore they look like miracle itself, complete with miracle's nonchalance.
  6. tremulous
    quivering as from weakness or fear
    The water lilies have blossomed and spread to a green horizontal plane that is terra firma to plodding blackbirds, and tremulous ceiling to black leeches, crayfish, and carp.
    Terra firma is Latin for "solid ground."
  7. alternating
    occurring by turns; first one and then the other
    The far end is an alternating series of fields and woods, fields and woods, threaded everywhere with motorcycle tracks--in whose bare clay wild turtles lay eggs.
  8. ensconce
    fix firmly
    I was relaxed on the tree trunk, ensconced in the lap of lichen, watching the lily pads at my feet tremble and part dreamily over the thrusting path of a carp.
    "Ensconced in the lap of lichen" is a twist on the phrase "sitting in the lap of luxury."
  9. inexplicable
    incapable of being explained or accounted for
    I swiveled around--and the next instant, inexplicably, I was looking down at a weasel, who was looking up at me.
  10. fierce
    marked by extreme and violent energy
    His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard's; he would have made a good arrowhead.
  11. emerge
    come out of
    The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild rose bush four feet away.
  12. intimate
    marked by close acquaintance, association, or familiarity
    It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons.
  13. dismantle
    take apart into its constituent pieces
    It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes.
    None of the verbs are being used literally here; all are hyperbolic descriptions of the effect the encounter had on the writer: she felt as if the rest of the world had fallen apart and nothing else existed except her, the weasel, and their eyes.
  14. careen
    move sideways or in an unsteady way
    I think I retrieved my brain from the weasel's brain, and tried to memorize what I was seeing, and the weasel felt the yank of separation, the careening splashdown into real life and the urgent current of instinct.
  15. plead
    appeal or request earnestly
    I waited motionless, my mind suddenly full of data and my spirit with pleadings, but he didn't return.
  16. conflict
    opposition between simultaneous but incompatible feelings
    Please do not tell me about "approach-avoidance conflicts."
  17. simultaneously
    at the same instant
    Brains are private places, muttering through unique and secret tapes--but the weasel and I both plugged into another tape simultaneously, for a sweet and shocking time.
  18. frank
    characterized by directness in manner or speech
    I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it.
  19. dignity
    the quality of being worthy of esteem or respect
    but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive.
  20. ignoble
    dishonorable in character or purpose
    The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons.
    The example sentence compares necessity to an eagle. Here, it is seen as something undesirable, because it can use its talons to turn us into ignoble prey. But the writer argues that necessity should be something we embrace, so that we can be lifted by it to great heights.
  21. suspect
    imagine to be the case or true or probable
    And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel's: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.
  22. supple
    moving and bending with ease
    The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse.
    "Supple" also means "readily adaptable"—both definitions fit the example sentence, since it compares the discovery of one's calling in life (which requires mental flexibility) to the hunting of prey (which requires physical skill).
  23. yield
    give in, as to influence or pressure
    A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.
  24. necessity
    anything indispensable
    I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.
  25. aloft
    high up in or into the air
    Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.
Created on Wed Jul 23 12:08:50 EDT 2014 (updated Tue Dec 03 11:38:28 EST 2019)

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