If you can't do the time, don't do the crime

It's not every day a girl gets presented with a mink by her husband!

Outdoor Guy had been matching wits all weekend with this little bugger. The mink had gotten into one of the outside circular raceways and had been munching on Yellowstone cutthroat trout.

Mink are carnivores. A mink will kill its prey by biting it on the back of the neck. They eat muskrats, rabbits, mice, chipmunks, snakes, frogs, birds and fish. And a few hundred fish in a relatively small, enclosed space was simply more temptation than this juvenile mink could stand. I'm pretty sure he stuck his head into the covered circular, saw the swarm of fish and thought "All-you-can-eat buffet here I come!"

Outdoor Guy noticed him swimming with the younger brood fish, and almost managed to catch him in a net. But the mink ducked and dodged and escaped the encounter unscathed. He left a few dead fish in his wake, however. Round one goes to the mink.

The mink doesn't know that my husband is a lean, mean, trapping machine. Outdoor Guy figured out where the mink was getting into the circular and set his trap there. He baited it with one of the dead fish, complete with mink teeth marks and a missing hunk of flesh. Outdoor Guy checked the trap the next morning and no mink. No fish either. It had stolen the bait. Round two goes to the mink.

Not to be outsmarted by a mustelid (member of the weasel family), Ben adjusted the trap and baited it again. Yesterday afternoon as I was gardening, he came up to the house and asked if I wanted to meet his nemesis. There in the trap, the mink seemed pretty innocent. He was just a little over a foot long with sleek, dark brown hair and a bushy tail. I read somewhere that when a mink is happy, it makes a purring sound like a cat. This mink was definitely not happy. And he stunk. Outdoor guy said mink spray like skunks and use their scent to mark territory.

Sure, he's just doing what a mink does, eating fish. Ben pointed out three or four fish with bite marks on their backs swimming in the circular, and that was in addition to several dead fish he'd already removed. No matter how cute, critters who eat fish simply aren't tolerated at a fish hatchery. Round three and the match went to Outdoor Guy. As the old saying goes, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.