The Mink

Are you living, fully, if you always get the shot? Don't get me wrong, the shot is important, but that's its own thing. You cannot always have the camera with you, or the best one. Sometimes interesting things just happen. It's better to just be present for those moments, and for me, here, those moments often involve animals (after all, we don't have children).

I watched a large owl fly up the driveway, or should I say -flyway. I've seen a red fox happily pouncing on an invisible object. After years of trying to spot the bird responsible for that jungle call, I finally spied the pileated woodpecker straight up, atop a dead tree. There were the flying squirrels on a blustery, snowy night near the woodpile. A coyote at five ayem, a buck at four. A snowy owl in the woods. And now, finally, a confirmational sighting of what was only a black blur plunging through the deep snow last winter -a mink, Neovison vison.

When phone cameras fail. That center-image shape is it, one of a veritable Muybridge series of shots that succumbed to the common bug screen.

The best I have, cropped from actual pixel resolution, makes for a mysterious looking creature. As it first passed into my view I thought, huh strange looking squirrel, but only for a split second. It bounded from a tree to the recycling pile, then over to the rear steps, underneath them, then to the ac unit, then back to the tractor implements, then toward the cold room, then up this tree about 20 feet, then down it, and on and on over about three or four minutes.