1. Golf ball. I've seen staff from UVM Grounds on numerous occasions hitting golf balls down into the retention pond. I picked up about a dozen yesterday. Most of them are driving range balls, but occasionally a nicer Titleist ball will show up.
Shrews are toxic to most mammals (they secrete a venom in their saliva that helps incapacitate larger prey). A mammalogist friend got bit by one a few years back and his arm went numb - imagine the effects on a green frog! I have found two half digested shrews thrown up by red foxes. Here the mink ate it's brains and so didn't have to worry about poisonous saliva. I assumed mink (Mustela vison) and not one of the other smaller weasels (long- and short-tailed weasels) as there were tracks about 15' away in a little stream. Mink also prefer aquatic habitats.
It was a pretty neat find and the second mink kill in that spot in the last couple of weeks.
Where: Centennial Woods
Other notes: Miraculously the fourth beaver (well now the third since UVM killed one of them) showed up again. While out the other night I could see two of them and heard a third making a low grunting noise. All three of them, at about the same time, started making that noise. It reminded me of when my chickens make a really uncomfortable clucking sound when our backyard woodchuck comes around. It's not a sign of imminent danger, but a signal that another presence is in the area - I wondered if the beavers were grunting at the fox that I've seen tracks from in the last week.
No comments:
Post a Comment