Fishers have been making their presence more known in my area of Eastern
Ontario; the first indication that they have moved into a city is the sudden,
unexplained drop in the domestic cat population.
Two years ago, I was walking along a sidewalk just beside the 401 (major
east-west highway in Canada), where a city street goes underneath the highway
through an underpass. A small stream runs under the street, parallel to the
401. Approaching the bridge over the stream (just before the 401 underpass), I
saw a strange animal emerge from the long weeds on the other side of the
bridge/stream. It was the size of a small-to-medium dog, with a long tail. It
walked toward me with not a care in the world, then casually diverted back into
the weeds after crossing the bridge.
A moment later, I was walking past the spot where the animal turned back into
the weeds. I looked down to see if there was any kind of trail.... no, not
exactly; but there was a pointy snout with black beady eyes atop sticking out
of the weeds about a foot and a half away from my feet: the fisher had decided
to wait and see if I was walking a tasty little doggy for it to pounce upon.
The prefered food of the fisher is the porcupine, which it climbs up after
into trees and disembowels from below. Cat on steroids? More like a mini
wolverine. I can guess what it was thinking while standing below your deer
stand, Dean...
John Morton.
>>>><<<<
Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2007 22:50:19 -0500
From: Dean Hansen <hanse112@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [OM] And where's the E-1?
I climbed into my elevated deer stand yesterday about 6PM just to
sit and watch the woods. After a half hour I noticed a small bit of
movement, and low and behold a fisher walked/jumped into view less than
30' away. What's a fisher? Think mink on steroids, or, roughly, a
very
skinny, but very large, cat with short legs. Beautiful animal! It
actively poked its nose here and there, scampered about, and generally
entertained me for over a minute. And the E-1? Back in the cabin,
regretfully. The fisher finally worked its way away from me, but then
it turned a 180 and moved up the path I had taken to my stand. Closer,
closer, until it walked less than 2' away from the base of the ladder
to
my stand. It jumped onto a rotten log all but directly below me; it
was now no more than 14' away from me, straight down. I took my
imaginary E-1, cranked the 14-54 lens to 54mm, and took some
frame-filling, if imaginary, shots. It was an absolutely magic couple
of minutes. I've never in my 65 years been that close for that long to
a fisher. But one can't take a photo if one doesn't have a camera
along. Next time I'm in that stand I'll bring the E-1 along.
There's a decent (better than anything I took) shot of a fisher at
www.borealforest.org/zoo/fisher.htm.
Dean
John Morton
http://OriginOfWriting.com
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