Puzzle for January 27th, 2012

This is a phonetic puzzle. To solve it, you need to think about how the words are pronounced, not how they are spelled. Remember that a phoneme may be made out of multiple letters, and the solution words will use distinct spellings, perhaps very different, for the same sounds.

Think of a 6-letter word for a political animal. Replace a phoneme in the middle to make a 5-letter word for a word meaning quite small. Enter either word.