7:02 a.m. 34 degrees, wind NE 1 mph. Sky: morning swaddled in fog, dim and somnolent, and so joylessly damp, an owl hoots in the hemlocks, where midnight still lurks undiminished. Condensed fog drips from branches and twigs. An under-the-covers morning (if only I could). Permanent and intermittent streams: after yesterday's showers, a slight volume increase, crystal-clear, filled with music. Wetlands: across the marsh, the density of fog suggests evergreens and bony-fingered hardwoods pressed against the suggestion of limitlessness. A flat, seemingly unmarred landscape, a two-dimensional mural accented by an owl, a disembodied voice in the loneliness of late October. Pond: juvenile male merganser hugs the east shoreline, glances at the dogs and me, and then glances north toward the cattails. Keeps glancing. I look, too. A mink, moving like an expanding and contracting slinky, enters the cattails, slips into the water, barely a ripple in and out of the water three times. Four times. Five times. Unlike last summer's otter, the mink avoids the middle of the pond. Stays put in the shallows, diving, and swimming, catching tadpoles and crayfish—all business.
A mammal on the cusp of two worlds, aquatic and terrestrial. I've watched mink catch sunfish in a lake and voles in a woodpile, and climb into the lower limbs of silver maple. So unique the mink Darwin affords it a cameo in chapter 6 of The Origin of Species.
It would be easy to show that within the same group carnivorous animals exist having every intermediate grade between truly aquatic and strictly terrestrial; and as each by a struggle for life, it is clear that each is well adapted in its habits to its place in nature. Look at the Mustela vision {now, Neovison vison} of North America, which has webbed feet and which resembles an otter in its fur, short legs, and form of tail; during summer this animal dives for and preys on fish, but during the long winter it leaves the frozen waters, and preys like other polecats on mice and land animals.
Now I see it. Now I don't. Now I do, long and thin. Cute but toothy. A water weasel, sleek and brown, the mammal that kept my mother fashionable. Eventually, mink leaves the pond and vanishes into a robe of fog, and I head home . . . momentarily unmoored from time.
Merganser, freed of concern, drifts back toward the cattails.
The mink as "fashion" -- perhaps Ms. Levin had a "mink fur stole" or a cape? An odd term "stole."
This morning a mink stole Naturalist son Ted's thoughts and helped him be "unmoored from time."
Somebody recently told me that commercial fur farms (ranches?) in the American West have been decimated by a virus which caused them to close and destroy animals. True? They wanted to know if COVID-related. I don't know. You?