A couple of weeks ago I was sitting beside the pond minding Merganser business when a mink suddenly appeared to my left barely two meters away. It looked at me in astonishment and I reciprocated. Then it moved, hesitated, looked at me again as if to say ' later,man' and disappeared over the edge into the pond. I first saw it in my peripheral vision, which distracted me from my deep thoughts, you know, wondering about things, like how deep is this pond, why do they post signs warning you not to venture into deep water but they never post signs warning you not to wade into deep shit, stuff like that. It's funny how the sudden presence of wildlife can redirect one's thoughts.
Anyway, I saw a disturbance in the pond again today and I was still thinking about those otters. I didn't think that this disturbance was the result of an otter, but perhaps a mink. Upon seeing it swimming I could immediately see that this rodent was bigger than a mink, had a longer snout, lighter coloured fur and slightly bigger ears than a mink. It was a muskrat ... FOY.
Mink eat fish while a muskrat eats vegetation. Note the green leafy num-nums trailing from its mouth. Dat ain't no fishy.
