Uninvited Animals!

I went into the hoop house to continue my fall cleanup.  After filling both long boxes with compost a week or so ago, I've been procrastinating and doing my best to think of a million better things to do.  But today, I knew I had to get out there and work.  Upon entering, I looked for the few field mice who live in there because they sort of keep me company.  Actually, they don't look much different from a hamster, and everyone loves hamsters, right?

 

But instead of seeing my little mice, I find this guy!  A baby fisher.  I figure he must have just left his mom, it being late October and all.  He certainly isn't full size yet, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief to find that his mother was nowhere in sight.  While fishers don't usually attack anything bigger than a porcupine, you never know what a cornered animal might do.

At first he was scared of me, but he got bolder.  Bold animals are not to be trusted.  Yes, he's a wee tike right now, but he won't be for long.  I wondered how long he'd been hanging out in my hoop house.  How did he get in?  The doors were closed.  How long did he plan on staying?  I sure hope he doesn't think he's going to stay for the winter, because he'll get much bigger and there could be a real problem when I go to harvest my winter spinach.

I watched him for a bit and saw how he got in and out--so simple, really.  His long body twists gracefully in any which direction.  The plastic to the hoop house is held down outside by heavy sandbags, but in between the sandbags are tiny "openings."  He'd found them all and wormed his way in and out quickly.  He had a million ways to get into my hoop house, which I had heretofore thought closed and protected.  Well, except for the mice.

 

And speaking of the mice, he had killed them all.  I saw a dead one behind one of the large planter boxes . . . then all of a sudden it was gone.  I looked again, and there was the fisher eating the mouse.  Now I feel a bit strange about losing my mouse friends.  I'd rather have them in the hoop house than my home, of course, but I guess the population would have skyrocketed and I don't need that either.

After he finished the mice, he left but I think he'll be back.  I hope not, but I think he likes it here.  That might present a problem for me.  I don't want anything to do with an adult fisher as they can be quite vicious.  Oh well.  Some people have to deal with traffic.  I have to deal with fishers.  Life is still good.