Something stoatally different

Whilst on a short morning's visit to Holy Island we were watching the area around the first white cottage on the Crooked Lonnen hoping to see a Great Grey Shrike, when we noticed a Stoat running across the field and entering the garden. A few minutes later it came back out and ran across the field carrying what looked like a yellow tennis ball, when we got better views we realised it was in fact an apple. This is something I have never seen before and wondered if anyone else has seen such behaviour?, and to carry on the tennis theme,the Shrike wasn't playing ball!.