Quality of life of minks depends on the owners of their habitat

SHARON WOOTTON

Originally published September 11, 2001

Nature rewards those who sit.

In a rare moment of doing nothing (OK, I had a book, a soda pop and a pair of binoculars but I was sitting still), a brown movement caught my eye.

A mink was headed to the water, passing about 20 feet from my driftwood perch. Usually the small animals prowl the rocks exposed by a low tide in a near-frenetic, I-am-awake-therefore-I-eat manner.

But this one was on a mission. It dove in and headed to the far side of the cove, holding a straight course at a 45-degree angle to the other shore, 500 feet away.

Two-thirds across, it made a 90-degree left, paddled for about 50 feet and made a 90-degree right, repeating that course correction 100 feet later to lead it to the preferred landing site.

That mink swim and dive, have partially webbed feet and prefer waterfront property was not news to me.

I've watched one do a series of 12-second dives (they can dive to about 15 feet), find a dead fish on the woodpile and discover Dungeness crab shells in the insulation under the cabin.

The diet of the carnivorous member of the weasel family may include sea urchins, mice, muskrats, rabbits, snakes, voles, frogs, small birds and shrews.

Their underwater vision is not particularly good, so they often spot a meal from shore and dive in, protected by a double layer of fur (oily layer repels water, inner layer provides warmth).

Mustela vison are ferocious, and unless you have cougars or foxes in your area, they're pretty much at the top of the food chain, although owls and hawks may nab young mink.

Mink kill by biting the back of the prey's neck. During mating season (January-March) they may use those teeth to grab the back of a female's neck to secure the target, so to speak.

That's the only time a solitary mink male will show any interest in another mink, except to hiss, snarl, screech and fight over territorial questions.

Dens are a smorgasbord: hollow logs, holes in a bank, exposed tree roots, driftwood piles, etc. A pregnant female will line a den with feathers, grass and fur to give her tiny young a soft bed, but other than that, mink just roam from den to den.

A female's territory may be 20-50 acres; a male's territory, marked by anal glands (they will spray when angered), may be up to 3 miles in diameter and include the range of several females.

The size, length and number of young vary widely depending on the source of information and whether they're including the tail, unfortunately.

They're larger than weasels, total length in the 19- to 28-inch range, weigh 1 to 3 pounds and have two to eight young. Young stay with mom during the summer, then leave to create territories.

Mink have the silkiest of furs, five toes with semiretractable claws, and the long bodies and short legs combination gives them the humpbacked look when running.

Although usually nocturnal, the mink here can be spotted almost any hour of the day.

The quality of their lives depends on the attitudes of the owners of the property over which they roam.

If the environment is kept natural, dogs don't harass them and people see them as part of the landscape, mink will continue to roam.

But if an occasional mink causes property owners work (cleaning out a crawl space that has been home to minks can be a negative experience) and they react with a gun or trap, a mink's quality of life is diminished, perhaps permanently.

Be a good neighbor. Share your space.

Sharon Wootton is a free-lance writer from the San Juan Islands. E-mail questions, suggestions or comments about nature, or Nature's Journal, to songandword@rockisland.com.

The Olympian Copyright 2001

back to main Outdoors: Environment index