A close encounter of the furred kind

Mystery mustelid leaves Rab searching for answers, while the equally bewildered wee brown beastie enjoys a salad starter followed by a fresh-caught fish supper

Ihave had an encounter – with a beastie. I’m no wildlife expert, so I’m not clear what it was.

However, I’ve been on yon internet, and the nearest I can find is a mink or maybe a weasel, having differentiated these from stoats and pine martens. We have pine martens at the house in Skye and, recently, I’ve been able to get up really close to the young ones, who gambol about on the decking.

So, I kind of ken pine martens, and it didn’t really look like one of those, even if there were similarities.

Here’s how the encounter occurred. I’d gone for a walk on a pebbly beach that I particularly like. It was as odd as the previous day’s walk on the shore at the other side of the bay, in the sense that I never encountered one soul the whole time.

You’ll have heard how busy Skye is in summer, and the local village was heaving, at least around the petrol station and supermarket.

But not one person had ventured round the bays, whereas I usually encounter two or three in spring, autumn or even winter.

But it was blissful and also blisteringly hot. So hot indeed that I decided it would be sensible to get out of the sun, which was easier said than done as the big ball of plasma was high in the sky.

Eventually, I found a high, narrow passage amidst black, craggy rocks. There was a large boulder in the middle, like a throne and so, not unnaturally, I sat on that.

And, as I was sitting there, a little face peeked out from a gap in the rocks a few feet away. At first, I feared it might be a rat but, as more of it emerged, I saw that it was something from the family Mustelidae.

I stayed still. The beastie looked straight at me and seemed bewildered, as indeed do many humans on beholding your columnist. He must have thought it was a big, weird rock. But then he noticed: it had eyes! And I couldn’t stop these moving.

He dived away but then reappeared through another space in the rocks and inched forward. Eventually, I decided to go for my camera, whereupon he hissed, which I thought a trifle rude.

He disappeared and reappeared, then ate a hardy flower from a fissure in a rock. One of his five a day, I guess, and it turned out this was just his salad starter before the main course, because he disappeared again then reappeared carrying from his mouth something that looked like the side of a skate or ray.

I know it sounds odd for a weasel to be by the seashore, and mink are freshwater beasties, but there were woods nearby and presumably the meal was from something that had washed ashore. It was flat and white, at any rate, cartilaginous and six inches square.

It was funny how he showed this off to me. Beasties do this. You might have seen a blackbird proudly brandishing a worm: “Look at me – the hunter!”

Eventually, this intrepid beastie beetled off with his booty, and I was left with that surreal feeling you get after encountering wild animals. Didn’t see one person all afternoon. Just a wee mammal with a side of fish.

Weasely recognised or stoatally different? Or was it a mink?