Minks, Shrews And Men In A Winter Swamp

Though the very small tracks had not held up, the wet snow took and retained footprints of the bigger animals beautifully. The wide, smudged trails of beavers led from holes in the pond ice, across the dam and into the thickets where there were fresh alder cuttings. Muskrats, leaving behind their curious, louse-shaped footprints, had been wandering about the marsh erratically, as they will do at this time of year. Twice we found places where they had dug down through the snow and nibbled off emerging skunk cabbage shoots. At least two foxes had been hunting on the high, drier rim of the swamp, pulling apart marsh tussocks in search of voles. A lone coon had for some reason been stirred out of his den. We followed his dignified trail for half a mile along the bank of a fast-moving stream. Deer, hares, grey squirrels, flying squirrels and a weasel had been walking in the swamp. In spruce and hemlock groves we found the trails of grouse, lines of fat little Xs, laid down so straight that it seemed as if the grouse must walk by compass.

By far the most numerous signs in the swamp had been made by minks. Somehow the tracks and activities of the hunting animals always seem livelier than those of the hunted. The restless trails of the minks crisscrossed the marsh as they incessantly probed every cranny of their range. We saw where they had trotted, run and jumped, where they had tunneled through the snow, stopped, sat on their haunches to test the air. There were holes in the ice all along the streams where minks went in and out of the water. Leading to and from the water holes were long smears of mud where the minks had slid along the snow, like otters. There was a big, much used, mink burrow in the side of the beaver lodge.

We followed the trail of a large male for a time. At first the mink had been loping along at normal cruising speed through a patch of cattails. The trail was regular, the small delicate footprints spaced evenly, the stride about 18 inches. Then he had stopped, sat up. Then he had begun to run, stretching out, bounding two and a half feet to the leap. Within about 20 feet, near an open water hole, the mink trail and that of a louse-footed muskrat intersected. Here the snow was torn up. We found a tuft of brown muskrat fur, but from the muskrat's standpoint they played a melodrama—not a tragedy. The path of chopped up, confused snow led back to the water. The mink on his first charge may have tumbled the muskrat off his feet, but old louse-foot had come fighting, and his big incisors must have been bared. Using his greater weight, lunging and bluffing, the muskrat had fallen back to the water and, as far as we could tell, escaped.

We stayed in the swamp until dusk, setting our traps, reading tracks. When we came out we drove to Kingwood, W. Va., dried, gorged and denned up at a hotel there which is much favored by birders, botanizers, swampers and shrew hunters. The hotel in Kingwood is a clean, comfortable, country-style place at which such soggy, muddy, thorn-branded specimens as John, Lee and I are welcomed. Also, even on a Sunday morning, stacks of hot cakes and country sausage are ready at dawn. A good box lunch will be packed by the time the last cup of coffee is finished.

We had set a line of traps on the eastern rim of the swamp and picked these up first, all empty. By the time we got onto the frozen stream that led to the beaver pond, the pale cold sunlight was full, as bright as it would ever be that day. Lee was ahead on his long, narrow shoes, which were fastest in the open, slowest in brush. Suddenly he stopped and held up his hand. John and I halted in stride. Fifty feet ahead of us we had an impression rather than a full view of a dark shadow that moved off into the cattails on the right bank.

"Mink," Lee turned and mouthed the word silently.

John and I moved up quietly until we were abreast of Lee.

"In the daylight?"

"Mating season," John, the information man, said, "not enough hours in the night for both hunting and loving."

Then on our left, 30 feet ahead, there was another movement in the reeds. A magnificent male ("Not the largest I have seen, but very large," John said later) came out on the ice. He was more than two feet long and still in his full winter coat. Against the snow he was as glossy as a black snake. The word "flow" is used to describe the gait of many animals, but among the mammals it best fits the weasel tribe and of the weasels is most descriptive of minks. The little weasel is too quick and erratic to flow. The otter is not quite at ease on land. The stout-bodied weasels—skunks, badgers and, I am told, the wolverine—waddle and rack. The marten and fisher are more arboreal.