Black what?

It was black and scurrying among the huge boulders at the water’s edge below the pavilion. Daughter, Allison, first spied it in mid-November, 2003. They were at the boat launch site at Fort Erie’s water park near the Palmwood Hotel at Crystal Beach. What was it? Allison made clicking noises and the black furred animal headed toward them as they stood at the pavilion. Wait! Allison stopped making the noises. She described the black animal as sleek. Was it a weasel or a ferret she asked her mother. The animal searched the rock crevices along the water’s edge. Looking for food it appeared. It was a relatively small animal. It had a bushy tail and they estimated it to be less than two feet in length. I knew what it was - a wild mink and from its size - a female!
Bud and Ed had trapped a mink in our barn years ago. I watched as they maneuvered a cage and captured the angry mink. What an animal. It hissed and snarled. My father took the mink to Burger’s Mink farm in Ridgeway. It was not an ordinary mink. It was a pregnant one! A few weeks later it gave birth to six little minks. Have you ever been to a mink farm? I approached the caged confines of our captive mink and its young. It struck at the wire barriers with a ferocious response to me. Smell! Our female mink exuded a fetid discharge. I said, “It’s worse that a skunk’s!” I had been sprayed by a skunk so I had some basis for comparison. I was told the mink’s odour dissipates quickly unlike the skunk’s long, lingering smell.
The wild mink is a voracious hunter. He likes muskrats as a preferred prey. He kills by biting the neck of the victim. His den is usually found near water and he often takes over the muskrat’s burrow. Chicken coops and wild minks means a massacre. They often kill all the chickens in a blood lust. Both sexes like to fight potential enemies. Besides fighting rival minks the male has been known to take on foxes, bobcats, and lynxes. A tough customer indeed. He has one serious predator. It’s not a mammal. It’s a bird - the Great horned owl.
Wild minks are found throughout North America. Ernie Giles, former area naturalist, called the other day. In the conversation he told of a ‘roadkill’ mink at the wetlands corner of Gorham and Garrison in Ridgeway. It was a large male mink again black furred. See any minks locally lately?