Fisher Cat!!!

MrrrRrrr Friends,


Yesterday I saw a fisher cat! I'm not kidding, Martens pennanti, not 3 feet away from me and Oom.


Here's what I'm talking about:

There we were, on the wild side of our property which, upgrade, is an alder swamp, and, closer to my brook, becomes a marshy shrubby area where we planted lots of red osier dogwood this spring. I was on the scent of something interesting in a brushy bunch of crunchy dead grass, and Oom was two paces behind me, standing and doing whatever it is humans do when they stare into space.


All of the sudden, this incredible distant relative of mine, came loping out of the alder swamp, passed right by me on his way to my brook. He didn't stop to look at me, or Oom who I could tell was trying to decide when to pick me up, but he knew we were there. He just wasn't gonna fuss about it. He had stuff to do and knew we were friendlies.


As soon as he passed us, Oom scooped me up and I scrambled to her shoulders, though she held on to my tail. We were both a little surprised, wondering if we should be a little scared, but mostly we just wanted to watch the big guy more. And he was BIG. I'd say 2 cat bodies ears to butthole, Oom says that's about 2 1/2 to 3 feet. Plus the awesome tail...gorgeous, glossy, fluffy thing. I was a bit jealous.

The big furry dude made two aborted crossings of the brook. Right before this, Oom was thinking, surely this isn't a fisher, maybe it's a mink? But after we saw him shy away from the shallow but fast water (confirmed after checking the animal picture books later in the house), we were both on the same page: fisher!


After the two aborted crossings, he doubled back right in front of us and pawsed, giving us a casual look while no more than 5 feet away. Then he was on his way, loping along our side of the brook into the neighbor's territory. We lost sight of him, but he must of found a dry crossing, and we glimpsed him on his way up into the forest headed toward the Sentinels.


It has made me reassess my use of my territory. It is a shared space. This morning, before heading into the field, I scoped the wild area from the hillock just behind the house.

And, now, I look over my shoulder a bit more. 

But mostly, I'm excited that animals like bobcats, turkeys, foxes, broadwinged hawks, and fishers like our little world as much as we do. And I'm glad I'm a cat with a home who gets to go Out but always with at least one of my people.

Ranger Rob - Part II

Mrrrr Friends,

I know you’ve been wondering. But some of you knew we were going to think about burning. All those nice dry blackberry stalks and dead wood and things would make a nice little bonfire. And it’s autumn…so it just seems a nice opportunity to partake in one of those cross-cultural human obsessions – burning stuff. 

Obviously, cats are fascinated by fire. Visually, it is very interesting, and there is the warmth thing. But we are also fascinated by the human desire to set fires as frequently as possible. (We assume you do it because you can…the opposable thumb thing?) There’s the cooking thing, we get that…but this whole wood/brush fire thing, as long you haven’t treated it with anything, that’s just plain entertaining. Now, the trash burning thing is yucky. Especially plastic stuff - stinky, smelly, toxic yucky. Here in New York, they finally figured that out and have banned all trash burning effective soon. In the Adirondack Park, you can imagine that fires are a serious business from the get-go.

So my people applied for a burn permit from the Man. In this case the Man was the DEC, that’s Department of Environmental Conservation to you. I was very excited because the Ranger said he was coming over to the house to give us our permit.

The other morning, we were visited by our local Ranger, Ranger Rob. He lives upstream a ways and has a little boy person. It sounds like they play in the same stream we do.  He met me, gave Oom our permit and walked out and chatted for a bit about where we live.

We had questions about critters and plants and other stuff, and Ranger Rob had answers.

Let’s get straight to the big news: Oom was wrong, I was right. I knew I was seeing critters in my brook…Ranger Rob says the Brookies get to 12” upstream and that they live in our part of the stream too. I’ve always wanted to be engaged in the native trout fishery. I’m already making plans to improve trout habitat on our little portion of the stream.

Equally important: there are quite a few fishers among us. This kind:

Now, I know fishers can be dangerous, and that a cat might seem a tasty treat (though my tracker friends in Wisconsin feel that fishers don’t really want to eat house cats), still I feel a real affinity for these little guys. Look at that photo…doesn’t the little furry guy look a lot like me in action?

The trees in the wild side of the yard that Oom couldn’t figure out? Fire or Pin Cherry (Prunus pensylvanica). Nice little native that, in our yard, hangs out with a bunch of bushy alders that we can’t quite pin down species-wise.

And we talked about the likelihood of deer (certainly), moose (maybe), coyotes (maybe), skunk and raccoon (uh-huh), Ravens and Broad-winged Hawks (yep, yep). We’ve met the latter two, but I’m looking forward to meeting the others – from an appropriate distance, mind you. We’ll hope that if Alex sees a moose, she’ll choose not to chase it – she did this once with a deer…the deer was so amazed, it ran. I hear moose poop smells nice and musty.

Ranger Rob was full of information critically important to a furry feline looking forward to introducing himself into his new environment. And he was a nice quiet kind of man. I hope we can invite him back soon…maybe he could come and help with the new trout hatchery I’m planning?

Oh, the burn permit?

We had quite a little scorcher on the parking pad. Alex and I stayed in and watched from the windows. In a couple hours it was over…amazing how quickly all that work went up in smoke.