You might not see them, but weasels infiltrate state
It’s a term of opprobrium — You Weasel!!! — hurled at duplicitous politicians, shysters and everyday hucksters dealing different hands of three-card monte.
You mink!!! You ermine!!! You fisher!!! Nobody says that.
Yet they’re the true weasels moving elusively across our landscape. They’re not sneaky or crooked. They’re just good at staying out of our way.
Ken Elkins, director of education at Audubon Connecticut’s Bent of the River nature center in Southbury, said he welcomes snow in winter, only to be able to see the tracks weasels leave behind. So this weekend’s snow is welcome.
“We’ve got a Boy Scout troop coming for a snowshoeing trip,” he said. “There may be just enough snow.”
Furthermore, Bent of the River has the aptly named Weasel Swamp.
“We’ve found evidence of mink and fisher there,” Elkins said.
“One of our landowners has sent us a picture of either a mink or fisher,” said Paul Elconin, land conservation director for the Weantinoge Heritage Trust, the largest land trust in northwestern Connecticut. “They’re definitely around.”
At the Great Hollow Nature Center and Ecological Research Center in New Fairfield, the staff has picked up fishers — the largest and most mythologized member of the weasel family in Connecticut — on their nature cams.
Lately, said John Foley, the naturalist and preserve steward at Great Hollow, they’ve found fisher tracks, rather than pictures.
“They have a huge range,” Foley said.
Weasels have always been part of the state’s ecosystem. But they’re small, slim, and usually nocturnal.
“They’re small. They might be working along a stream or a stone wall, but you have to stay very still to see one,” said Jenny Dick- son, supervising wildlife biologist at the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. “At least very quiet.”
The two smallest are the short-tailed weasel — better known at Neiman Marcus as the ermine — and the long-tailed weasel. Both live in woods, brush lots and along wetlands. They hunt rodents and, although small, can take down something as large as a rabbit.
They’re also the only two weasels in the state that change colors as the seasons change. In the summer months, they’re brown. As winter approaches, they molt and turn white, keeping only the black tips of their tails.
Dickson said the DEEP has done a study showing that short-tailed weasels are more common in the state than they’re longtailed cousins.
“They’re a little more adaptable,” she said.
Mink are habitat-specific. Brown-furred and white-chinned, webbedfooted and semi-aquatic they live near ponds, rivers and marshes. They have thick, waterproof fur and can dive long and deep, even under the ice.
Like all weasels, they’re carnivores — they’ll hunt muskrats, but also squirrels, fish and frogs. If they live near people who keep poultry, they’ll also steal chickens.
All these weasels are basically solitary. The female tends the young while they’re growing, but the family breaks up every year. They have pungent scent glands, but unlike their relatives, the skunks, they can’t throw their stink.
In size, mink are the in-between members of the weasel family. They’re bigger and chunkier than short-and-long-tailed weasels, but smaller than fishers.
Fishers are sizable — about 3 feet in length, weighing 8 to 12 pounds. They’re brown-furred and live in the woods.
Which is why in the 19th century fishers were extirpated in the state — farmers cut down the forests to make pastures and fishers had nowhere to live.
In the 20th century, the woods grew back and fishers returned to the state’s northeast corner. Because they couldn’t cross the Connecticut River into Litchfield County’s verdant forests, the DEEP began in 1988 to purchase trapped fishers and re-establish them there. They’re now a thriving species in the state.
Because people aren’t used to fishers, they’ve created stories about them.
“We still hear people calling them ‘fisher cats’,” Dickson said. “They think of them as big cats, not members of the weasel family.”
They also may, or may not, make wild cries in the night. Most of the time, it’s foxes doing the blood-curdling screaming.
Fishers are good climbers and can go high up into trees. They eat rabbits, rodents and even porcupines. If they wander into a backyard, they can treat cats as prey.
It’s far more likely though, if your cat goes missing, that a coyote or a car did the killing.
“But it’s one more reason to keep your cats indoors,” Dickson said Contact Robert Miller at earthmattersrgm@gmail.com