By Aaron Horrell

This little animal is a wild mink native to North America. It's natural range crosses the continent from Florida to Alaska. It is the American mink. This one is wet from going in and out of the water. It was wandering the bank of a stream when our paths crossed.

The American mink is a carnivore. It eats animals such as small fish, crustaceans, frogs, mice and young rabbits. It is a short-legged animal that spends most of its time on the ground, but it can climb trees to raid bird nests. It also may go into a farmer's barn and catch and kill his chickens.

The American mink is a furbearing animal. Its fine, soft fur has been prized for making fur coats and stoles.

The American mink is easy to breed and raise. Mink farming began in the late 1800s and continues today. Many countries across the world now have mink farms.

Sadly and inevitably, some of the mink escape into the wild, and now there are wild American mink colonies in places like Siberia, China, Denmark, Italy, England, Norway, Spain and even Iceland.

Some of these foreign countries have declared the American mink an invasive species because it has had a negative effect on some of their native animal species.