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The Tragedy of the Sea Mink

A few days ago, I was out for nature walk. It is my usual custom to go out in the late afternoon, but on this day a heavy storm interrupted my usual routine. I waited until the rain stopped, and then headed out. It was in that period of the day in when afternoon begins to sink away into dusk. The long shadows of the sun reached across the meadows and fields. A three deer wandered out to graze in the tall May grass. The birds sang their last songs of the day as they headed back for their roosting places. In the distance I could hear my neighbor's young cockerels crowing, sometimes interrupted by raucous calls of his three guinea fowl. My young golden retriever loped ahead of me, spooking the deer and forcing them to run deep into the thickets from whence they came. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed some movement near the old farm pond. When I turned my eyes to glance upon the movement, I noticed a chocolate-brown animal that was about the same size and shape as a domestic ferret. As my brain began to analyze what I was seeing, I realize that I had come across a mink. It was foraging in the newly mown grass, searching for little insects and small mammals that were either chopped up or exposed by the mowing machine. When it noticed that I was looking at it, the mink dashed towards a stand of shrubs that abutted the neighbor's property.

The mink I saw was an American mink (Neovison vison). This species is the only remaining species of true mink. The European mink (Mustela lutreola) is now classified with the ferrets and polecats. Indeed, a European mink once mated with a European polecat and produced fertile offspring. The American mink was introduced to Europe largely through escapes from fur farms. It has out-competed the European mink to such a level that now European mink are critically endangered.

However, there was a third species of mink. This animal was a true mink, a native of North America, and a very close cousin of the American species. Some authorities classified it as a subspecies of American mink, but as we shall see, it had some distinctive features that separated it from its chocolate-colored and black relatives. This species lived exclusively on the coast of New England, the Maritimes, and probably Newfoundland. Because it was so closely associated with saltwater and the littoral environment, the species is now known as the sea mink (Neovision macrodon). It possessed a better pelt than its inland cousin that was

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