Vison, the Mink (American Woodland Tales)

by Jean Craighead George

  Vison threw all his energies into the first requirements of living, food and shelter. He learned where to hunt and always to have retreats near at hand to which he could flee if challenged. He learned where the birds nested, and how to scout for mice and fish. He learned to recognize the trails that his land enemies followed, and the hunting grounds of his winged foe. Even though young, Vison was prepared for this rigorous life. Generations of dauntless warriors had sired him, and his own tireless energy served him well. Perhaps his greatest asset was that he was fitted for a dual way of life. Vison was at home in the water as well as on the land. He could plunge into a river or stream if threatened by his land enemies, or take to the land if challenged in the waterways. This also gave him two sources of food, so he rarely lacked the means of obtaining a meal. In the abundant lands and waters of the Potomac River basin, Vison prospered—a true champion.

  Vison staked out a hunting area for himself during the summer. It stretched from his foot-log den back across River Road and up to the muskrat pond. In it were included the meadows and woodland borders. This range was his own, and he knew it well. Here he felt at home. Here he could find all he needed and wanted.

  It was early September when Vison became aware of another young male mink on his Muddy Branch area. He was loping over the floor of colored leaves when he came upon the gray mark of the mink. The feces dropped by the waterline prowler lay on a stone at the side of the swift current where Vison often caught young fallfish. Vison knew this was the sign of another male mink that had come into his territory. To Vison, this intrusion on his land was an invitation to battle.

  The young rival had recently left his mother and moved in from Buck’s Creek, a smaller stream higher up the canal. He, like his brothers and sisters, had left his birthplace, stimulated by a compelling instinct that sent him out in search of vacant niches that he might fill. He had been on Muddy Branch only a few days when he learned of Vison’s presence.

  Some days later Vison again found signs of the rival mink. Coming down the stream bed, he discovered the tail of a vanquished mouse and the fins of a sucker from his favorite pool. These discoveries of the rival’s successful hunting trips in his territory further enraged the outlaw.

  However, the two mink did not meet for many days. Droppings, bits of game, and old scents were all they knew of each other. One night Vison returned early from the muskrat pond. As he traveled to the foot log, he smelt the scent of the rival mink in the leaves before an old muskrat den. Vison angrily scented the ground, circled the den, and then went in. The rival was out hunting. Vison returned to the entrance where he dropped his challenge, heavy with the scent of anger. He left reluctantly, checking the game trails that his enemy might have taken.

  When the rival mink returned to his den at dawn, he found Vison’s mark. He knew it was an angry mink that had visited his makeshift home. He left the den and moved down the stream to a hollow log, where he curled up to pass a restless day. The rival knew he must eventually meet and fight this mink or depart to some other valley.

  Off and on during the next week, the two mink found more and more messages from each other. The opened shells of crayfish, the leavings of a fish meal, pieced together from day to day, revealed to each the runways and habits of the other.

  It was early evening when they finally met. Vison was frogging beyond the ford where River Road crossed the stream. He knew that the rival mink came to this spot on his way to the fields for mice. All the time he was working on his meal, he had his senses keyed to unusual sounds of the woodland. A blue jay on its way to roost spotted him at the water’s edge. Vison had not counted on this. The raucous bird screamed noisily in the limbs above his head. The message was relayed through the leaves and branches. Birds clucked and screamed, telling the entire forest of the presence of Vison, the Mink.

  The message was heard by the rival mink who was fishing just above Vison’s foot log. He knew that the birds were scolding something on the ground—something near the water’s edge—perhaps Vison. He darted forward capitalizing on the advantage he held over his enemy. He knew what to expect, but Vison did not. In a snake-like glide, he rounded the bed of the stream and slunk toward the labeled spot.

  Vison, however, was fully aware of what was happening around him. Should any enemy be within earshot, he would surely investigate this commotion. Vison ducked into a hole at the foot of a tree and waited. The birds ceased their screams and flew off to their roosts. A cicada buzzed in a tree over the water. Nothing happened.

  Slowly Vison slid out into the woods, cocking his head and stretching his neck as he tested the air for sounds or scents of danger. The wind was blowing upstream. It carried the faint scent of the rival mink to him.

  Bolting in a blurred streak. Vison leapt to the sandy edge of the stream and raced down the shore. His flanks were heaving and his sides shaking when he rounded the bend and came face to face with the rival.

  They both stopped and Vison rose to his hind feet. The rival mink, taken somewhat by surprise, drew back. They eyed each other intently, their small eves glowing in their heads, their mouths slightly open, backs arched, and hind legs crouched to the earth. Moments passed.

  A tremor began to vibrate their bodies as their breath came in rapid spurts. Slowly they came toward each other until scarcely a foot apart. Gathering strength for the final leap, they rose to their hind feet and stood motionless for a full minute.

  Then Vison turned his head to the right, swaying slightly as he calculated the thrust to his enemy’s vulnerable throat. The rival did the same. They judged the final strike.

  The next instant they were closed. In the strike Vison had pulled his head to his chest and clamped down upon his enemy. His powerful jaws closed in a death grip. During the silent struggle Vison clung to the rival’s throat until the life had left him.

  That night, Mephitis, the skunk, carried the rival mink off through the woods.

  For the first time since the fateful night when Urocyon killed his mother, Vison traveled to the river. He roamed the Potomac for several days, swimming from rock to rock in the low waters. In the heat of the day he sought shelter on the small islands. The sun was low before he took up his fishing and hunting.

  In those days on the river, the mink learned much about the men who dwelt along the Potomac banks. They came out into the rapids in boats that they poled through the currents.

  He saw how they fished and where they sought their catch. Usually in the quiet eddies below the islands and boulders. He heard their call as it rolled across the water.

  One morning he awoke to find Al Starcher standing on the same island as he. Al was a river man. Long years of living alone in a tar-paper shack on the first terrace above the Potomac flood plain had shaped his life and appearance. His shirt and trousers were bleached by the sun. His arms and face were brown and wind worn. The color ended at the collar and at the elbows where his sleeves were rolled. Al was lean, quiet, and not too strong. His blue eyes were set deep in his head and dark hair showed under his cap. Al was an excellent fisherman and knew the ways of the fish of the Potomac.

  As he stood at the edge of the island, dipping his fishing line in and out of the eddy, he brought a catfish from the river. He threw it into the rushes at his feet. It flopped beside two others. These Vison eyed hopefully. As Al resumed his casting, Vison slipped from his burrow and eased his way silently to the flopping prey. He almost crossed Al’s muddy toe to seize the fish. It was large, but Vison’s strength was great and he darted back to cover with it. He set upon it with hunger.

  Al landed another fish and threw it with the rest. Then he studied his catch. One was missing. He put his rod down in a forked branch and kicked the grasses in search. He looked at the water to make sure it had not flopped back into the river. Bewildered and perplexed he went back to his fishing rod.

  No sooner had he turned his back and cast his line far out into the eddy than Vison vaulted out of the brush and leapt upon another fish. This time
, the flash of movement caught Al’s attention and he spun around to see Vison holding the fish high as he made for cover.

  “Hey, there, git, shoo,” Al called furiously. He lunged forward, stooping for a rock as he charged for the mink. Vison dropped the heavy burden and without hurrying, turned, cleared the hem of reeds, and dived into the river.

  When Vison surfaced several yards away, he saw Al standing on the shore carefully watching the water for him. Al had a stone clutched in his raised arm and was ready for the first ripple that broke around Vison’s nose. Spotting the mink, he heaved the stone into the air and sent it flying toward its mark. For a fraction of a second Vison watched it coming directly toward him. Then Vison was gone. Under the water, he heard it splash as it hit the surface. An instant later it clinked on the rocky river bottom.

  Unperturbed by the entire incident, Vison swam easily through the water, watching the underwater lights scintillate from the bubbles and ripples of the river.

  That night Al told old Buck Queen, the hunter, who lived down the road from him, of the impudent performance of the little brown mink on the river island. The white-haired man listened to the details carefully and then chuckled.

  “Yes, indeed, Al,” he said, “they’ll do just that. At times they just don’t seem to be afraid of anything.” Al settled back in his chair as the old hunter began telling of the many mink he had seen.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WILL STACKS, TRAPPER of Muddy Branch and Seneca, sat barefooted in his shack above the field where Vison hunted mice. It was a hot day and the wind that blew off the river carried no relief. It was moist with a steam that settled oppressively over the Potomac River bottoms in the last days of summer. The trapper was fanning the perspiration from his face with a Washington newspaper.

  While he fanned, he thought of last season’s fur auctions. Fur companies had paid a record price of over one hundred dollars for an exceptional wild mink pelt, whereas big lots of good grade large and extra large wild mink pelts were bringing from twenty-five to forty dollars per pelt. This year the wild mink were bringing even a better price than the selected and good quality darks of the mink ranches. Stacks knew that the Potomac country was not as good as the northern states for mink ranching, but that Maryland produced a fine wild mink. Through the years, mink pelts were consistently valuable and the dictates of last year’s fashions had raised their value. This made the business of trapping the elusive animal more than worth while. Stacks walked over to his stove and stirred a catfish chowder he was cooking for lunch. Carefully he recalled where he had seen the trail of mink in the snow last winter over in the Muddy Branch area. It was around that old sycamore that the footprints had been most numerous; and there had been signs of mink along the canal at the cliff, and up in the muskrat pond, and over on Buck’s Creek. He wondered how many there were and how many he would be able to trap.

  The chowder was ready, and the man turned his thoughts to lunch. Al Starcher had given him some fresh corn from the garden. This he shucked and threw into a pot of boiling water. The community along the Potomac was closely knit. They often supplemented each other’s meals with extra fish they caught, a rabbit or squirrel in autumn, or vegetables from their summer gardens. One of the most pleasant moments of the life of the river dwellers was to come off the restless water with a stringer of fish and to stop by Buck’s place, or Al’s shack, or Cy Cummings’ porch and share a few of their catch. This always called for stories of where and how the fish were caught. Bait was discussed and good holes were described many times. The stories were always about the same, everyone knew what bait to use and where to fish; nevertheless, they never failed to interest the listener and the tellers.

  As Will ate the catfish chowder and the corn, he recalled the story of Al and the mink on the island. That had been a variation on the usual fishing story, and the trapper found it of great interest. He pieced this together with his own observations.

  This musing led him to the conclusion that he would not go out on the river immediately, but to his shed to check his traps and lures.

  From the beams of the cluttered shed hung a few hides from last year’s take. These he had been unable to sell to the traveling fur buyer. They were not the best of his pelts. Sometime during the winter when the weather was bad for trapping, he would make them into mittens or a hat for himself. Now they hung inside-out from the rough rafters like naked gnomes.

  Will picked out his mink lure from an assortment of odd smelling bottles and opened the crusted lid. The lure had dried up during the summer. He would have to mix a new brew before the season opened. The fox scent was ready for use. He had completed the secret formula for this lure only a few days ago, and the strong aroma from the mixture still hung in the shed. Ingredients for the muskrat and other scents were arranged on the work bench. These he would mix a week or ten days before he set out his trapping line. It was too early to complete them; so he set about cleaning and repairing his traps. Will worked for several hours, boiling them with walnut hulls and testing their triggers for spring. As he worked, his thoughts went back to the trails and animals of the river. Finally, he put his traps aside and yielded to his curiosity.

  The old trapper strode from his shed, slipped his feet into a worn pair of work shoes, and started off across the field to search for the dens and signs of fur-bearing animals. A dragon fly, speeding across the goldenrod, darted before him, hovered a moment near his face, and then vanished into the sunlight. A cricket sang feverishly in the grass before his path. It stopped suddenly upon Will’s approach, only to set up the raucous grinding of its wings once more when the vibrations of Will’s step no longer shook the ground.

  At the ford in Muddy Branch, Will turned toward the river and walked silently into the woods. He picked his way along the stream bank, his eyes trained to signs of the mink, fox, or raccoon.

  Well ahead of Stacks, Vison was fishing a quiet pool of Muddy Branch. He looked through the water. The underwater nooks of the fish were empty, and he moved on to another spot. Here the water poured over the stones without a sign of life. The dancing sunlight, reflected from the broken stream, raced over the underside of the leaves and across the trunks of the sycamores and elms. Vison started off to the field for mice and beetles. As he crossed the fence row by a trail that led under the matted honeysuckle, he saw a fence lizard sunning itself on a wooden rail. Vison caught it as he bounded over the rail into the sedges and wild carrots of the field.

  Loping through the jungle of grasses and autumn wildflowers, Vison was seen by a soaring red-shouldered hawk. The hawk closed his wings and dropped toward the mink. The speeding shadow of the bird swept over the grasses. It crossed the nose of the outlaw as it sped to the woods. Warned by the shadow, Vison dived into the crevice of an uprooted stump as the buteo broke his fall on bending pinions not more than a foot above the spot where Vison had been. Its quarry gone, the bird banked and climbed back into the air. Flapping heavily, it reached a rising air current. Then the red-shouldered hawk soared away in a lazy spiral.

  The stump was moist and comfortable. Vison scratched the loose wood into the shape of his body, and circling several times, lay down to sleep. An hour later, he was awakened by the swish of a grass snake coming through the asters by his stump. Vison cleared the door of his hole in one pounce and fell upon the snake. A meadow vole heard the scuffle and scampered off along his runway. A field sparrow burst into flight at the commotion. Vison finished his meal and returned to the stump where he slept until night.

  During the night the air from the cooling hills flowed down toward the warmth of the river, creating an off-land wind. This wind brought a hint of autumn, and the departure of the flowers and leaves and transient birds. It stirred within Vison a restless inquisitiveness. The outlaw followed the winds and scents of the changing land in the spirit of wanderlust. Across the dry floor of the woods and over the hills the mink galloped. He ran up fallen trees and sprang to the ground like a dancer. Each den he came upon he sear
ched boldly. The pools of the stream he explored with twisting glides and surface dives.

  The outlaw was practicing an underwater turn when he heard pebbles clinking and grinding somewhere in the stream above him. He surfaced and slowly slipped out of the water to the bank.

  Procyon, the raccoon, was busily feeling among the rocks and pebbles of the stream bottom for crayfish. He lifted his head and looked down the stream as he caught the scent of Vison. Then out of the bushes bounded the woodland outlaw. Vison stopped and looked at the squat, powerfully built Procyon. Seeing that the disturbance was neither enemy nor food, the mink continued along the well-trodden trails to the muskrat pond. Procyon, unconcerned, had never interrupted the search with his probing, sensitive fingers. A moment later his diligence was rewarded, and he climbed the bank with a crayfish. Noisily his bared teeth crunched the hard tail of the crustacean.

  Leaping and running, Vison came to the open pond that lay in the valley between the pine and oak covered hills. Many years ago Will Stacks had dammed Muddy Branch at this point to make a swamp for muskrats. Above the damp rim of the pond grew the moisture loving hardwoods—the willows and the maples. Below the hardwoods, a shrub-swamp of alders fringed the pond.

  The alders gave way to a tight thicket of cattails, rushes, and sedges. In the deeper water of the pond, water lilies, and arrow heads replaced the cattails. Beyond them lay an underwater garden. The pond was a living, changing thing. Early in its life the underwater garden had checked the current and so began the filling of the pond. As the depth grew more shallow, the floating pond lilies pushed the underwater garden out into the pond. They, in turn, were being forced to follow by the emergent cattails as the pond filled. The cattails were pushed after the lilies by the alder shrubs, which in turn gave way to the deciduous forest. This forest was slowly creeping toward the center of the pond as it filled.