Photo by Heather Sinon
This wet mink, of the weasel family like a fisher, was photographed in the Mountain Brook Nature preserve off Copper Hill Road. He has his jaws firmly closed on a crayfish.
The other day, our flock of hens was out eating my hosta and pecking around the yard as they like to do. As part of our relaxation therapy regime, we had plunked ourselves down in our chairs and were watching them do what they do best. Things were seeming pretty idyllic, and I sashayed in to fix one of my fabulous meals straight out of the Betty Crocker Boys and Girls cook book. That, paired with our libations reminiscent of an episode of Madmen and we were feeling pretty relaxed. Our therapy was working. This feeling was not to last as I peered out our window and it looked like there had been a pillow fight in our yard. I headed out and quickly clapped my hands over my eyes to avoid the scene. We had three chickens, dead, with only the head and neck area eaten. Their feathered bodies were intact which made it much more disheartening for all of us, especially the victims Now, we get the circle of life and expect to lose a hen or two to a fox or hawk who have the good sense to eat what they kill and take the leftovers for their offspring. This was not at all like that and, quite frankly, you’d never catch a fox being so Spartan. At any rate, the surviving girls had gone into panic mode, something they learned from their humans. They fanned out, and we needed to spend the good part of the evening luring them back to their coop. Suffice it to say that our flock was on edge and it turns out that they would need to buy into our relaxation therapy as well.
As hubby disposed of the bodies, he caught sight of a weasely animal bounding away into the woods. We were starting to put two and two together, perhaps we had a fisher cat to deal with. A neighbor had heard its eerie scream the night before and coupled with the Charles Manson-esque scene, we figured we had a problem. We confined the flock to the coop. They have short memories and were not happy about the lock down.
We researched the fisher cat. We learned that fisher cats were reintroduced into the northwest part of the state in the 1980s. They are about 4–15 lbs, and dark brown. They inhabit forests, are active at dawn and dusk and are powerful killers, sometimes only consuming the head area of their prey. Fisher cats, like mink and other weasels had been trapped for their fur and even had been farmed for their pelts. But, the fisher cat can really make a pregnancy last, mating but being in a holding pattern for many months before getting things started, offspring wise. So most fur farmers threw in the towel. Believe it or not, I started to feel kind of bad about all the fisher’s relatives that ended up as coats and muffs and figured this might just be pay back. And, although I never was chic enough to own a muff, I know plenty of New Englanders who don’t feel dressed without one.
So, life went on, but I couldn’t stop thinking about muffs and worrying about what might be happening out in the coop when we were not on vigil. I arranged my worry dolls on my shelf and subscribed to other tactics I had heard that help with worry. I wrote my worries down, breathed more slowly, and sniffed grapefruit, all with limited success. It turns out, rather ironically, I needed to practice the Japanese tradition of partaking in shinrin-yoku, or a forest bath. That is, a trip out into the woods would lower my stress levels and my worry. Now, that’s something I can easily live with! The down side might be a face to face encounter with my chicken’s nemesis, but I am willing to take that risk.