SCOTT SHALAWAY Common but seldom-seen critters

Every time I travel I'm reminded of a universal ecological truth. Animals needn't be seen by people to be present. Just because I rarely see a particular animal doesn't mean it isn't there. Many mammals in particular are seldom seen, yet are really quite common.
Road-kills that litter everything from interstate highways to gravel country roads prove this on a daily basis.Just a few days ago, for example, I was driving to town with my wife and daughter when I noticed a long, thin, freshly killed mammal on the road.
Since it was a road less traveled, I was able to stop safely to investigate. By now my family has grown accustomed to my habit of checking out dead things. This critter was particularly interesting because I had never seen a road-killed weasel, and that's what this appeared to be.
Hunch was correct
On closer examination, my hunch proved correct. It was a long-tailed weasel, scourge of the hen house on small family farms. I picked it up and showed it to Linda and Emma. They both said something to the effect that they didn't know there were weasels around. They had never seen one, so they assumed weasels were rare or absent.
In fact, I might stumble upon four different species of weasels within a few hundred yards of the house. The long-tailed weasel is probably the most common.
It measures up to 17 inches long, including tail, lives in most habitats, and eats cottontails, squirrels, and mice. Ermine, or short-tailed weasels, are a bit larger than a chipmunk at about 11 inches in length, prefer open woods and forest edges, and eat birds and small mammals such as chipmunks.
The least weasel, at seven to eight inches only slightly larger than a meadow vole, ranks as the continent's smallest carnivore and prefers old fields and pastures where it specializes on voles and mice.
If you want to control the rodent population around the house or barn, weasels are your friend.When I wander along a stream or through a marsh, I might catch a glimpse of the largest local weasel.
Mink can measure up to 27 inches long, including a six to nine inch tail. They are creatures of waterways -- streams, river banks, and marshes, where they eat crayfish, frogs, fish, snakes, and ducks. During winter, muskrats are the food of choice.
None are rare
Each of these voracious carnivores is seldom seen, but none is rare. They are nocturnal and secretive, so only mammalogists who study them see them more than occasionally. And even then it's usually in a live trap while doing field work.
Bobcats are another predator that most people would describe as rare, but they occur throughout most of the lower 48 states. About twice the size of an average house cat, bobcats are distinguished by a short tail and black tufts of fur on the tips of the ears. The only live bobcats I've ever seen have been crossing the road at night -- here one moment, gone the next.
Foxes are also rarely observed, but both red and gray foxes are common throughout the east. Red foxes frequent fields and forest edges and are most often seen when pups first emerge from the den. Sometimes the entire litter frolics and fights within eyeshot of a rural back porch. Grays, on the other hand, prefer wooded areas and are ghost-like as they seem to appear and vanish at will.
Seldom seen, but common
The most common seldom seen mammal, however, is probably the southern flying squirrel. It occurs throughout the eastern deciduous forest where it eats nuts, seeds, fungi, insects, and in the spring flying squirrels eat birds, eggs, and nestlings. Yet only those who host a family of flyers in the attic are aware of their presence. That's because they are strictly nocturnal. But if you illuminate your backyard bird feeding station, eventually you'll notice these beautiful small mammals as they help themselves to sunflower seeds.
Just because we see a particular animal infrequently doesn't mean that animal is rare. It simply means we aren't watching where and when the animal lives.
sshalaway@aol.com