“Curiosity killed the cat,” is the old proverb warning against being too inquisitive. Cats have the advantage, though, of having nine lives.
Our little female, “fixed” to prevent an uptick in offspring in the neighborhood, fits the description well. She never finds a place she isn’t fond of going, including the top tier of metal shelving I was reconfiguring the other evening.
Butterscotch — name given the little feline by our granddaughters because of her coloring — also is quite a hunter. Just this week she snared three birds — none of the song variety — and devoured all but wings and feet.
Cats aren’t the only animals that have an inborn propensity to examine every hole, brush tangle or adventuresome challenge they happen on. So do mink.
That tendency is of great advantage of trappers, who were the first to explore much of the western two-thirds of the country in the 18th and 19th centuries. Still is, for that hardy few who still pursue the sport.
Mink are relatively few in number, but catching one is not overly difficult because they like to nose into any enclosure as they dart about streams each night in search of some culinary delight, such as a slightly putrid muskrat, or anything else opportunistically available.
During the years when I spent several weeks each winter trapping — often rising at 4 or 5 in the morning to check traps before school and then work — mink were the prize I coveted. Their fur is a rich brown and a pelt always is worth several dollars. Taking as many as a dozen in a year — which I’ve done —hereabouts is considered a banner harvest.
The first I caught was, I must admit, by accident. In my pre-teen years, I was trapping muskrats on Owl Creek, west of Humboldt, at places where they created “runs” by climbing banks to munch on grass and roots. One morning, much to my surprise one of my No.1 Victors held a mink.
Several years passed before I learned enough to make sets with confidence they would intrigue a mink.
The simple set is what Mark Hastings (once my trapping partner) and I called dummies. We dug small holes 12 to 18 inches into a creek’s bank at the water line, with expectation a mink would take a peek inside.
A trap, usually a quick-reacting coil spring, was concealed with water-soaked leaves and liquid mud just outside the entrance, with twigs placed to encourage a mink to step over and onto the trap’s trigger.
One particularly productive year, a set on Coal Creek produced a nice male mink the first morning of the season. That year I also caught one in the entrance to a muskrat house in a quick-kill Conibear.
Each fall the urge to put out a trapline nags. This year, even though I’m not as sure of foot as I once was, I just might take a stab.
