Ah ha; it's sort of like a fat ferret. Cute, but devious.

Pine Martens are beautiful. I've seen them several times in the US. Squirrels are terrified of them--they are apparently very efficient hunters.

Apparently they're good for red squirrel conservation, they'll hunt the invasive grey squirrels but not the long-suffering native red squirrels.

Wow, I didn't know that. The first time I saw one was up in the Enchantment Lakes in Washington State. We came around a corner in the trail and heard the squirrels making a furious racket high up in the Douglas Firs above us. I remember thinking "hey, we can't be that scary, what gives?"

We turned a corner around one of the Dougs and there was a big Pine Marten scrambling up the bole of the tree, chasing squirrel for lunch. Mystery solved!

Never heard the name marten before, weasel is ised more often i guess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_marten?wprov=sfla1

Yes but a European Marten of which he speaks is much bigger that a European weasel.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_pine_marten

This is the real culprit, in fact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beech_marten

Haunting people making noise at night in old houses is also a common hobby (but somebody must to run after the yummy mice).

Seems like they are primarily a thing of Europe. They have a special love-relationship with cars, especially the warm engine after stopping the car during the cool and wet season. After a rain and when my car is dirty outside, I can see their footprints all over the chassis. With modern cars and their enclosing of the engine (because of sound pollution) they have a much harder time to find their way into the engine bay where they would readily gnaw at any wiring and hoses they find.

There are super-sonic devices to be installed in the engine bay to shoo them.

In the spirit of HN's creed to encourage curiosity, I want take this opportunity to make my fellow hackers' lives easier and teach you skills for looking up information. Giving up after a Google search indicates you likely have a deficit.

You can use a dictionary or encyclopedia for word definitions. I like the Oxford for its quality, and Wikipedia for its breadth.

• https://lexico.com/definition/marten

• https://enwp.org/marten

User-friendly browsers like Opera 12 and Firefox have features to turn a form or search result into a reusable template that can be triggered with a shortcut from the address bar. I habitually make use of this for looking up definitions.

If you care to take the acquisition of skills to the 95th percentile and beyond, measured against the general population, then the material at Fravia's Searchlores (deliberately not linked) will do that.

In this case, you can also guess it’s an animal and search for “martens animal”

Guessing that “martens” is the plural of “marten” also works fine.

I think many would find that easier.