Someone reportedly broke into a mink farm in Pennsylvania, setting free thousands of its furry inhabitants.
Before 6.50am on Sunday, an unidentified suspect — or suspects — cut holes into the fences around the Richard H Stahl Sons farm in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, according to the state police’s report.
This resulted in the release of roughly 6,000 to 8,000 mink from their pens, the report stated.
“Numerous state agencies and farm staff are currently working on recovering the mink that escaped the fence,” the report added.
Mike Workman, the Pennsylvania Game Warden, said that while the animals are different colours, most will be “brown and tannish.”
He also warned locals to steer clear of the mink: “Just stay away. Don’t touch it, don’t try to trap it, and don’t try to catch it. They will bite you, and they can potentially hurt you. We want to make sure the public is safe.”
The Pennsylvania Game Commission said that mink are most active at night or early in the morning. They are “agile and fierce fighters, killing prey with a hard bite to the back of the skull,” the commission said.
Mink are opportunists, the commission added, “feeding on whatever is most easily caught or found... Mink occasionally kill more than they can eat.”
For this reason, pet-owners should heed caution.
Dr Beverly Shaw, who works at the nearby Sunbury Animal Hospital, also told the outlet that pets shouldn’t go near the escaped creatures either: “Take your dogs out on a leash. Mink might not be big enough to go after a big dog, but that doesn’t mean they can’t get injured by one. I would suspect cats and kittens, kittens especially, could be at risk.”
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Richard H Stahl Sons farm opened in 1955; today, it is one of the state’s few remaining producers of mink pelt.
