Every year my husband and I pack our bags and travel to Old Forge for Labor Day weekend.

While we are there, we tend to spend every waking hour hiking the trails.

Last year, we decided to hike a small trail near Route 28, right outside of Old Forge.

It looked to be a beautiful trail, and we had a gorgeous day!

What more could we ask for?

About halfway along the trail, we noticed that the trail suddenly went straight up a mountain.

But we continued on and as we climbed up the trail, I prayed that we would not roll down.

As we approached the top of the mountain, I looked up from the ground and found myself face to face with a creature that I had never seen before. I was too exhausted to jump or scream. So, I stared in wonder.

The creature I was staring at was a fisher. Fishers are a large member of the weasel (Mustelidae) family and are twice the size of mink.

Males are about 38 inches long and weigh about 10 pounds. Females are about 34 inches and 5 pounds.

They are dark brown; though appear almost black in the forest with males often having a lighter grizzled coloration on the face, head and over the shoulders.

All four feet have five toes with retractable claws and their hind legs are able to rotate 180 degrees so climbing a tree for these guys is no problem at all.

Fishers are solitary animals that prefer forested habitats.

They were once found across New York until the mid- to late 1800s when huge tracts of fisher habitat were lost to agriculture, human settlement and logging.

This restricted their range to the Adirondack Mountains.

Unregulated trapping also took its toll.

The trapping season was closed in 1937 in New York, followed by a recovery of the population which led to the numbers quadrupling by 1955.

They feed upon mice, squirrels, ruffed grouse and porcupines.

In fact, the fisher is well known for its ability to take a porcupine.

The fisher will repeatedly attack the porcupine's face until death and then it will turn the animal over and eat it from the quill-less underside.

Porcupines are apparently worth the effort. Porcupines will feed the fisher for a good month where as other animals such as a squirrel will only feed it for one to two days.

Fishers are becoming more and more common in our state, not only because they are growing in numbers but also because they can really get around.

Fishers can travel up to 28 miles in two days.

With that in mind maybe you'll spot one soon.

For more information on New York wildlife, contact Cornell Cooperative Extension of Cayuga County at 255-1183.

Renee Jensen is a Community Educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Cayuga County.