Went to Dublin on Friday. Noticed a lot of roadkill, the usual fox or two, a badger, two pheasants etc, average medieval feast of squished beasts.
But I kept seeing larger, more densely furred roadkill that was lighter in colour. At first I thought it might be some fancy-pants thoroughbred cat, like a Himalayan Persian, but they were too big. I spotted about six or seven of them at least on the way up, and then on the way back today – ie, on the other side of the massive boring-ass motorway – I saw about another seven. I pointed them out to my daughter, who said there’s one of them on the side of the road in Midleton too. This is what we saw:
Not yer man, the yoke he’s holding. This pic is nicked from his very interesting (if you’re fascinated by roadkill; and since you read this blog, you obviously are) post on finding one of these glamorous fuckers in Kilmeaden in late March.
During otter surveys in Co. Waterford, we have come across signs of mink in2011 and 2012. I’ve seen feral mink a few times, and they have always been small and dark in colour. On Monday (March 25th) we picked up what we thought was an unusual mammal just outside Kilmeadan, Co. Waterford. As you can see in the photographs, the animal is greyish in colour and quite large in comparison to anything I would expect to see in Ireland.
The haplotype from the Waterford animal was similar to the common Hap1, found in both farmed and feral mink in Poland. Zalewski noted that farmed mink in Europe have originated from breeding of American mink from different localities and this has created a population with high genetic diversity. This has resulted in the feral population also having high genetic diversity, aiding its survival in the wild. Zalewski et al. (2011) say that mink breeders select mink for size and colour and this has resulted in larger animals (similar to the one here). That study also found that mink exhibiting a colour coat other than the dark version genetically clustered with farm mink rather than feral mink, indicating that those mink were direct releases or escapees from a fur farm.
I had never seen a single mink in Ireland until this weekend, but it would appear that we are now swarming with the fuckers. Although given their lemming-like propensity for chucking themselves in front of cars, we should have them all dead in another 12 months or so, and then it’ll be back to the Celtic Tiger uniform of fur coats and no knickers for all of us.
Or we could just get planes to fly a little lower.
Triple Distilled Communications 