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Winter
1999
[TEXT ARCHIVE WEB-PUBLISHED
MARCH 2002.
ORIGINAL PRINT PUBLICATION DATE: WINTER 1999.]
Real
Mink
By
Greg Melaik and Elizabeth Sanders
The
mink (Musela vison) is more familiar to some people
in the form of a stole or coat than as a wilderness neighbor.
But Brad Semel, a biologist with the Illinois Department
of Natural Resources, says these sleek, reddish-to-chocolate
brown predators "can be found near many perennially
wet natural areas, even the densely developed ones where
natural corridors surround waterways." Although they
do not spend as much time in the water as their otter cousins,
mink are well adapted to aquatic habitats, with their webbed
toes and dense fur.
Though
common and widespread, mink are rarely seen because they're
principally nocturnal. Semel notes that if you want to spot
one, your best bet is in winter. "Males travel longer
distances and more often in daylight between January and
March, because this is breeding season. If you go to a stream
or wetland, especially on a snowy winter day, you might
catch sight of one. Even if you don't," Semel adds,
"you are almost sure to see their tracks in the snow,
or their distinctive scat, full of feathers, fur, and bones.
This fall, my young son spotted a mink scat on the boardwalk
at Moraine
Hills State Park [in Lake County, Illinois]. Closer
curious investigation revealed cottontail and muskrat fur.
Some people are not so thrilled to pick apart scat, but
we were fascinated by the story it told."
Robert
Kennicott, a founder of the Chicago Academy of Sciences
in 1856 and among the first to document Illinois fauna,
saw mink often: "In the prairie sloughs it devours
at times considerable quantities of cray-fish, tadpoles,
and frogs; and when the smaller of these places becomes
nearly dry from evaporation, and are quite alive with tadpoles,
and occasionally with mud-fish and sticklebacks—it
clears these muddy pools entirely of their unfortunate inhabitants,
which have no way of escape."
According
to Dick Bautz of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources,
mink have poor vision. "If you stand really still,
one might run by you as close as six feet away and not notice
you," he says. They have few predators beside the great-horned
owl. People used to trap them, but today most people would
rather watch one through binoculars. "Often I see them
while I am up on a ladder checking wood duck boxes,"
Semel notes. "They explore every wood stump and burrow,
ever alert and quick, beautiful animals. This daily drama
of the hunt and birth and death occurs all around us."
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