Freds
Veteran Member
A few weeks ago the neighbor told me his daughter saw something walking across our yards in the middle of the day. He said it might have been a fisher by her description. Today I might have seen the same thing while hogging the back field. Again, middle of the day.
I have been doing web and image searches of PA's mink, muskrat, fisher, weasel type critters and none are perfect matches. By description alone, and the fact that it was out in daylight, I'd have to say muskrat. And I do have some cat tails in a marshy area in the back, their home of choice... fishers' descriptions say nocturnal, are much larger and the tail isn't as long. Plus they are fuzzier by their picture, but when I do an image search of muskrats I run into critters that aren't as long and slender as what I saw. It almost has me thinking mink. I can't seem to get the description and the image of the same animal to be on the same page, so to speak.
So anyway, the body was about 12-15" and the tail maybe half of that. Very sleek, very slender, but the neck wasn't as long as what I am seeing for weasels. Very dark reddish brown body, black tail and with a white tip on the tail, something not mentioned for any of them. The hair looked flat and tight to the body. Not fuzzy like a ground hog. And the head was slender, not "face like" or triangular like a fisher (again, going by pics on the internet). The gait was loping and it did noot stand up, but rather trotted along very close to the ground, stopped, then carried on. It didn't give me that curious look over like ground hogs do. I was about ten yards from it.
Kind of tough to tell without me taking a pic of it, but I'm hoping someone with firsthand knowledge of what it is likely to be might say something. I can't tell from combing the internet at all. Plus them all being in the same family doesn't help.
I have been doing web and image searches of PA's mink, muskrat, fisher, weasel type critters and none are perfect matches. By description alone, and the fact that it was out in daylight, I'd have to say muskrat. And I do have some cat tails in a marshy area in the back, their home of choice... fishers' descriptions say nocturnal, are much larger and the tail isn't as long. Plus they are fuzzier by their picture, but when I do an image search of muskrats I run into critters that aren't as long and slender as what I saw. It almost has me thinking mink. I can't seem to get the description and the image of the same animal to be on the same page, so to speak.
So anyway, the body was about 12-15" and the tail maybe half of that. Very sleek, very slender, but the neck wasn't as long as what I am seeing for weasels. Very dark reddish brown body, black tail and with a white tip on the tail, something not mentioned for any of them. The hair looked flat and tight to the body. Not fuzzy like a ground hog. And the head was slender, not "face like" or triangular like a fisher (again, going by pics on the internet). The gait was loping and it did noot stand up, but rather trotted along very close to the ground, stopped, then carried on. It didn't give me that curious look over like ground hogs do. I was about ten yards from it.
Kind of tough to tell without me taking a pic of it, but I'm hoping someone with firsthand knowledge of what it is likely to be might say something. I can't tell from combing the internet at all. Plus them all being in the same family doesn't help.
