Beyond Your Backyard "Meet the mink!"

By Kimberly J. Epp

This week's feature animal, the mink, is a member of the weasel family, and is active year-round. Mink can be found in several areas right within Moose Jaw. If there is open water for them to get into, you just might find some mink activity.

A mink with a freshly caught perch at Buffalo Pound Provincial Park (photo by Michael St. Laurent).

Two infamous mink of Moose Jaw have been lovingly named Mork and Mindy by members of the Moose Jaw Camera Club, however both are rival males hunting in the same habitat. Males are nearly twice the size of females. Although primarily nocturnal hunters, mink are opportunistic and will hunt during the day when they find a good and easily attained food source. They are fierce predators, and no prey is off limits. With such a high metabolism, they have a big appetite.

Mork the mink going back into the water to hunt crayfish (photo by Bob Schultz).

Mink, unlike the other 3 most common wild weasels that we have here, stay brown year round. They look like large dark weasels, and their tracks can easily be mistaken for the Long-tailed Weasel. Their tracks are most often found near sloughs or rivers, near gaps in the water. They feed mainly on muskrats, but will eat other prey when muskrats are not available. They will even travel on land to hunt hares or other available prey.

Mink tracks along the Moose Jaw River (photo by Kimberly Epp).

The name "mink" comes from a Swedish word that means "stinky animal". The mink is the smelliest of the weasels, although not as smelly as a skunk. Its anal musk glands can release a stinky liquid when the animal is threatened, although this spray cannot be accurately aimed.

Mork takes a quick look up as his crayfish attempts to sleuth away (photo by Michael St. Laurent).

Like other weasels, a mink may kill more prey than it can eat. Food caches are tucked away in its den, which is typically dug into a riverbank, beneath a rock pile or in the home of a permanently "evicted" muskrat. The den may also be an old Beaver den. The den is lined with grasses, feathers and other soft materials - perhaps even with the soft fur of the previous tennants!

Speaking of opportunistic, we know that Great Horned Owls are nocturnal. But if prey is abundant at other times, they will hunt during the day. And I observed twice in one day, with two groups of schoolchildren, a Great Horned Owl swoop down and grab each muskrat we were looking at. Surely the opportunistic mink then took over those two suddenly free to rent muskrat homes! Nature can be weird.

Mink breed anytime between late January and early April, so they could very well be breeding now. Because of delayed implantation, however, the female almost always gives birth in April or early May. Two to ten helpless, pink and blind young pups are born at this time, in the same type of den as the winter den.

Mork the mink licking his chomps (photo by Hilda Maier).

The next time you are out and about near Wakamow or Plaxton Lake, see if you can find bounding cat-like tracks near open water. If the tracks are fresh, stop and watch for a while. Maybe you just might get a view of one of Moose Jaw's formidable mink. Just be sure to view from the safety of the boardwalk or pathway. Maybe you will even see Mork or Mindy!

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Epp is an environmental educator and writer and is also the Past President and Field Trip/Workshop Director for the Moose Jaw Nature Society. She can be reached at kepp@shaw.ca or via the MJNS Facebook page.