RECREA TION. 



87 



openings in the ice. There the living 

 things of the creek appear and there he 

 feeds upon them. He is not amphibious 

 but he is a wonderful swimmer. In the 

 swift reaches of the creek where rapids 

 are, and which are never frozen over, he 

 floats, serene, but all in hand and watch- 

 ful. He is not like the otter which, even 

 in a quiet pond, writhes and curves and 

 makes smooth aqueous summersaults in 

 an exuberance of delight in power and 

 gift of swimming. He but feeds himself, 

 belonging where is, a furred thing in the 

 ice water, possessed of all gifts for the 

 end lie seeks and very wise in his way. 



When the flood tides come is the time 

 to catch the mink, be these tides in mid- 

 winter or in the spring. He has certain 

 acute perceptions. You may hide a 

 steel trap under snow and hang above 

 it tempting bait, a ruffed grouse or an 

 owl, as the case may be, and hap has 

 come to gun-shot, but the mink will not, 

 in dallying beneath that tempting bait, 

 tread on the trap below; yet he does not 

 understand how treacherous man may 

 make the water. Those who know the 

 creeks know that as the drift wood comes 

 down it ever lodges somewhere and forms 

 triangles pointing down stream over the 

 apex of which bubbles the confluence of 

 ripples. Right over that point drifts 

 always the floating, listless monarch of 

 the tiny river and with the steel trap 

 hidden half an inch, or may be a full 

 inch beneath the water, with something 

 fleshly to attract him there, the mink is 

 a sure victim. The sultan is slain in the 

 very midst of his possessions. So, often, 

 have I seized him with my steel clamp, 



watchful and waiting while I slept and 

 dreamed in the farm house of licking 

 some other fellow. 



This is but a rambling, wandering talk 

 about the mink, the beautiful creature 

 whom so many hundreds or thousands 

 of men know so well. The wonder to 

 me is that he is not well known to every 

 one. I read Thoreau and wonder that 

 the mink was not one of the animals 

 appearing conspicuously in his story of 

 the Winter by Walden lake. Possibly, 

 though, at that time, the mink had been 

 almost exterminated by the trappers of 

 the region, and possibly Thoreau did not 

 talk about the mink because there were 

 no mink to talk about. It is good to me 

 that the fierce, lovable thing of the past 

 promises to be a part of all the future. 

 It is not exterminated as the forest dis- 

 appears and the creeks are shriveled. 



I wish that within the limits of a 

 magazine article I could say all I want 

 to say or ought to say about this brown- 

 black, small, murderous " varmint " of 

 the little water sheds. A friend of mine 

 who has been in Alaska and explored 

 something of that vast region under 

 governmental auspices, tells me that the 

 mink there is greater, blacker, thicker- 

 furred and more riotous of life ; prey- 

 ing upon the myriads of sea birds and 

 on the lemings on the mountain-sides of 

 Behrings Sea and Behrings Strait. He 

 tells me that the mink defies all temper- 

 ature and raids northward until he looks 

 toward the pole from Barrow's Point. I 

 have great love for our small, beautiful, 

 blood-thirsty friend, the mink. God 

 bless him ! 



