Trenchant criticism from a childhood teacher removed any ambition from Carolyn King’s mind and almost led her to join the Women’s Royal Navy Service as a lorry driver. Instead, with the help of good teachers and supervisors, as a newbie grad student in 1967 she began studying weasels with absolutely no idea of what she was letting herself in for. In this memoir, a companion volume to her book Stoat in the Dock: The ecology and management of invasive mustelids in New Zealand (Springer Nature, 2025), King offers the inside story of a lifetime’s determined efforts to understand the ecology of weasels as elusive native carnivores in England, and stoats and ferrets as invasive pests in New Zealand, introduced to stem the tide of pasture-eating rabbits.
King shares her conviction that ordinary diligence and conscious gratitude for help are, in the long run, more important than a fizzing intellect in enabling a modest but deeply fulfilling career in research. She expresses her gratitude for the many ‘angels in disguise’ whom she met at critical moments, often resulting in significant turning points in her life, and shares her remarkable story in the hope that others may be inspired to push through the barriers that life presents. Throughout, she expresses gratitude for the privilege of spending her entire professional life doing the only sort of work she ever wanted to do.