Watch for Miks on the Roadside

by Kevin Strauss

When driving after dark, you might see the flicker of two eyes close to the road. As you get closer, you might see a dark shape scurry into the ditch. If you are really observant, you might even see the weasel-like creature stop, turn around in the ditch to watch you drive by.

While we have several weasels in the northland, one of the most common here is the mink (Mustela vision). These 16-29 inch long (including a 5-9 inch tail) dark brown weasels spend much of their time hunting along river and stream shorelines for crayfish, fish, frogs and young turtles. But they are not above feeding on roadkill deer and other carrion. It is this interest in carrion that brings them closer to the road.

Robed in thick, oily fur, mink seem immune to the effects of near-freezing winter rivers and lakes. As lakes are beginning to freeze, minks keep feeding holes open so they can search for hibernating frogs and turtles in the mud in the lake bottoms. In addition to hunting underwater, mink also hunt mice and voles in the winter grass and later, beneath winter snow. In some cases, a mink might dive under the snow to follow a mouse tunnel and come up 15 feet away.

Despite being trapped for their fur for years, mink are common in the northwoods these days, especially in the inaccessible regions of the Boundary Waters Wilderness. The reason that we don't often see them is because of their nocturnal (night-active) habits and what appears to be their instinctive avoidance of humans. Their dark fur also helps them blend into the normally brown forest floor in the spring, summer and fall.

Some naturalists describe mink as nature's example of a “perpetual motion machine.” Minks always seem to be moving: hunting, sliding, running or just “playing” all the time.

In addition to smaller prey, mink also feed on muskrat. Usually muskrats avoid predators by swimming away or hiding in their cattail shelters. But mink can swim as well as muskrats and often follow them into their dens for dinner. That way, the mink can get a meal and a home.

Most of the minks who make up the now out of fashion (in the U. S. at least) mink coats, are farm raised and not trapped in the wild. In case you wondered, it takes 75 mink pelts to make a mink coat. No wonder French-Canadian voyageurs in the 1700-1800's preferred to make warm coats from beavers, bears or other larger animal skins.

The Ely Timberjay