Fisher cats — not to be confused with swamp rats, pole cats, Sasquatch, catfish or coon hounds — are on the prowl in Shelton. But environmentalists said the over-sized weasels aren’t much to worry about.
Teresa Gallagher, a conservation agent with the City of Shelton, posted information about fisher cats on the Shelton Trails & Conservation Facebook page after a few people recently spotted the elusive animal.
While the animal isn’t new to the region, seeing one is startling.
“The universal response that people have is they’re just mystified,” Gallagher said. “They are so different than any other animal they’ve ever come across or seen a picture of.”
They Kill Porcupines!
Fisher cats are dark brown or black with long bushy tails. They measure some 30 inches long and can weigh up to six or seven pounds. They are members of the weasel family.
They’re shy and known to be a bit jumpy.
Their numbers were once decimated by hunting — but the state re-introduced them about 20 years ago, according to a 2009 article by Gregory B. Hladkey in the Hartford Advocate.
Click here for more on the fisher’s history in the Nutmeg state.
They’ve been thriving since then, but are still much more common in northern New England. The Advocate article placed the numbers of animals in Connecticut as in the “low thousands.”
The fisher is not an animal you want to pat on the head and scratch behind the ears.
Like any wild animal — don’t feed them. Don’t back it into a corner. If you see one, keep your distance, especially during the day because fishers are mostly nocturnal.
There was a report of a fisher attacking a little boy — and then the boy’s backpack — in Rhode Island in 2009. It’s unclear whether the animal was ill or had rabies.
Here’s a local television report on that incident:
The medium-sized hunter will eat just about anything it can get its claws on — berries, small animals, even dead deer. The animal’s Wikipedia entry points out several times a fisher can kill porcupines.
That’s Creepy
The animal’s also a bit of a weirdo — or at least has built up that reputation online.
The website Fisher Cat Screech invites New Englanders to share their encounters with the animal. It also encourages folks to “like this weird animal on Facebook.”
The Fisher Cat Facebook page has one post — “Fisher cats are fierce,” followed by comments about the fisher’s legendary night screams.
Yes, fisher cats have a reputation for making very creepy sounds at night.
Check out this video:
BUT — people in the know, including Gallagher and Paul Rego, wildlife guru with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said the night sound attributed to the fisher is most likely another animal, such as a fox.
Rego said people have provided DEEP with audio of supposed fisher screams, but the sound usually comes from another animal.
“People that have researched (fisher cats) and actually raised them will tell you that they’re not a very vocal animal,” Rego said.
Gallagher pointed out the numerous videos online of the supposed fisher cat scream never actually show a fisher cat. It’s always a noise in the dark of night.
She pointed the Valley Indy to this YouTube video, which shows a red fox making a sound like something out of a torture porn flick:
The American Society of Mammalogists has said fishers make a range of noises, from a “low chuckle,” to hissing and growling.
In addition, the fisher has an inflated reputation for snagging dogs and cats. Those killings are more likely the work of coyotes, experts said.
Eric P. Orff, a wildlife biologist in New Hampshire, says the fisher’s bad reputation is based entirely on false info. He calls the fisher the Rodney Dangerfield of New Hampshire wildlife. Click here to read his essay.
Chickens, though? That’s another possibility.
Shelton’s Gil Pastore has lived in the Pine Rock Park area for about 23 years. There are plenty of woods there — perfect habitat for the fisher.
Pastore saw his first fisher in November and has spotted it several times since.
“It’s very low to the ground, a very quick, fast runner and it was mostly coming in at night, but i haven’t seen it in a couple weeks,” Pastore said.
He has some chickens disappear a few years back and thinks a fisher may have been the culprit.
“I even set up trail cameras, but you could never get a good image of what was coming into the cages,” Pastore said. “It was just a blur of something moving past the camera. When a fox walks by you know it’s a fox, it’s like they almost enjoy getting their picture taken.”
