A recent video taken in Allandale Woods captured amazing footage of a rarely seen fisher cat hanging out in a tree.
Fisher cat in Allandale Woods from JamaicaPlainNews.com on Vimeo.
"I was climbing up a hill in Allandale Woods with my big yellow lab mix dog Juno. Juno got excited and started snuffling around the ground and I heard something scurrying. I looked up and there was the fisher cat in the tree," Amy Brubaker told Jamaica Plain News.
Fisher cats are very solitary animals, and their names are a misnomer as they are not cats, nor do they catch fish. They are about 32 to 40 inches long, including a 12- to 16-inch tail, according to Mass Audubon. Males can weight 8 to 16 pounds, while females are about 4 to 6 pounds, according to Mass.gov.
They are actually the second largest animal in the weasel family -- with the largest being the wolverine. Fisher cats are carnivorous animals that eat rabbits, snowshoe hares, squirrels, raccoons, mice, reptiles, amphibians, dead or decaying animals -- and the occasional house cat, thus their name.
Fishers are known for being magnificent killers, as evidenced by being one of the few mammals that prey on porcupines, according to Mass Audubon. They do that by attacking the underbelly and face of the quilled creature.
Thankfully, Brubaker and Juno did not have a confrontation with the fisher cat.
"I couldn’t figure out what it was. I thought maybe a ferret, but it was much bigger than that...seemed like about 3 feet if you included the big bushy tail," Brubaker said. "I thought maybe an otter because its pelt was so silky and shiny, but we were pretty far from water. Its face looked more like a little teddy bear than an otter.
"Juno was very excited. It was kind of a standoff between them, but she behaved herself well," Brubaker continued. "We have a cat at home who she is friendly with so I think she was trying to figure out what it was. Just like I was."