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Mink
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Length.—21 inches.
Description.—Larger than the weasel, with a thicker tail. Colour always very dark-brown, nearly black, with a spot of white on the chin and often on the chest or belly also.
Range.—Northern parts of North America, south in the Alleghanies to Pennsylvania and probably to North Carolina. In the lowlands to Florida the minks belong to slightly different varieties.
Range.—Coast of Southern New England through the lowlands to North Carolina.
Range.—Coasts of Louisiana and Texas.
Range.—Salt marshes of Southern States, South Carolina to Florida.
The mink is endowed with boundless resources in the face of danger as well as in the matter of getting a living. Wander where he will day or night, it is of small consequence whether the enemy that attacks him is fox, dog, wildcat, otter or owl, he is always within a couple of jumps of some place of refuge. If the water is near, he dives without a splash, and darts away like a fish, almost as much at home as the fish themselves in the swirling depths of the eddies and dim passages beneath sunken logs and drift-wood, only coming to the surface here and there for a breath until the enemy is left hopelessly behind.
When the water is not within reach, he can go up the nearest tree like a squirrel, or dart into any hole or crevice that would hide a rat; and lacking this, can out-run and out-dodge any ordinary pursuer: for, though short of leg, his body is long, and so supple that he uses the entire length of his spine in running, doubling himself into the form of a hoop and straightening out again at every jump with incredible swiftness.
I have seen him show such speed on numerous occasions that I have little doubt that the swiftest hawk or fox would have to do his very best and be lucky in the bargain in order to catch him. As a last resort he can fight, as many an incautious creature several time his size has learned to its cost.
Referring to the mink's faculty for hiding anywhere they may chance to be, I have seen them disappear instantly among the dry oak leaves that carpet the open where hardwood grows, and they will do the same thing in short thin grass or shallow snow with a suddenness that leaves the beholder wondering. At such times, if they deign to show themselves, again, it will in all probability be several rods at least from where they disappeared, and then perhaps only for the briefest glimpse.
Only yesterday I was sitting beneath a sheltered bank, warmed by the thin sunlight of late November and well out of the reach of the roaring north wind, when I heard a rustling among the leaves eight or ten rods away. Looking toward the sound, I saw, just for an instant, a beautiful little female mink with the sun full on her back, then saw only the russet coloured leaves sloping up between the tree trunks; but even while I looked there was the mink again several rods farther away and just in the act of vanishing as before.
I squeaked like a mouse to call her, but the wind was so loud in the trees that I failed to make myself heard; so I imitated the chatter of a red-squirrel as closely as I could, and instantly the mink came skipping toward me over the ice of a little pond that lay between us.
I do not think that I have ever seen any other four-footed creature, not even a deer or a fox, run with such baffling swiftness. I could just catch the one image of her coming head up across the sunlit ice before she disappeared in the sere frozen water grass almost at my feet.
Last Christmas day I saw a very large mink hunting a little party of ruffed grouse among the pines and birches on a hillside. The grouse kept taking short nervous flights here and there, while the mink beat the underbrush like a pointer and seemed to be everywhere at once, and nowhere for more than a second at a time, until finally he turned up where I least expected to see him, almost behind me, digging excitedly beneath an old log, after mice apparently, scattering the wet willow leaves to right and left in his eagerness. On another occasion, when I was duck shooting, I saw a mink in the pines across a river, and called him over to my side in order to have a look at him. Running down the steep bank, he dived, and, swimming under water, only rose when within a few yards of where I stood, and at once popped into a burrow at the water's edge. A few seconds later he emerged from another opening half-way up the bank, and running a little way toward me, sat perfectly erect, eyeing me curiously, then dropped to all fours and ran round to the other side to look me over from that point of view.