Until recently, the eerie screams echoing from the woods were, in my mind, unmistakably attributed to fishers, often mislabeled as “fisher cats.” It was accepted knowledge, a common tale, a quirky fact about a local creature. Fisher cats scream. You might never witness it, but it was a given.
My introduction to the fisher’s scream happened during elementary school, perched in my friend’s treehouse. He recounted a story of a classmate’s cat vanishing, blaming a fisher and its banshee-like shrieks. These vivid images stuck with me. We conjured up gruesome scenarios of the incident, debating which part of the cat the fisher would devour first. We also became wary of the hammock hanging in the treehouse, convinced it was infested with earwigs ready to crawl into our ears and brains if we weren’t vigilant. We were, as it turned out, wrong about more than one thing that day.
From that point onward, every time I heard what I believed to be a fisher scream, I’d picture our friend’s cat meeting its unfortunate end. Whether the story was mere schoolyard gossip was irrelevant. With the unwavering confidence of the misinformed, I perpetuated the myth: “Fisher cats shriek like banshees.” My trail camera, a hobby I picked up to better understand the woods around me, often captured fishers. I’d even seen them in person. Everything seemed to confirm my belief: I’d hear a chilling cry, and later find photos of the supposed culprit on my camera’s memory card.
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Then, one day, curiosity led me down an internet rabbit hole about fishers. I had stumbled upon a report about fishers in Maine preying on Canada lynx, despite the lynx’s considerable size advantage. Intrigued, I wanted to learn more. Fishers, despite their modest size – around twelve pounds at most, like miniature wolverines – were described as meticulously dismantling lynx carcasses. They would sometimes behead them, hide parts in different locations, and consume the kill over several meals. The childhood question, “which part of the cat would the fisher eat first?” suddenly felt relevant again, albeit in a much more dramatic context.
As I navigated from one link to another, the extent of my ignorance about fishers became increasingly clear. The one thing I was certain of, the scream, turned out to be a complete misconception. The screams I attributed to fisher cats were most likely those of foxes. Mass Audubon’s website explicitly states that fishers “are pretty quiet creatures… There are also numerous YouTube sites with recordings attributed to screaming fishers, rather than what we believe is the actual vocalist, a red fox.”
Initially, I was skeptical. However, a National Geographic video corroborated this information. The video documented a camera crew visiting a woman in the Vermont woods who insisted she had heard Fisher Cat Screams. As an experiment, the video host played various animal sounds through a speaker in the woods, testing if the woman could identify the sound she believed to be a fisher. First, a barn owl, then a bobcat, a hare, and finally a red fox. To the fox sound, the woman responded, “That’s either a fisher or a red fox.” The host clarified that the sound was indeed a fox, not a fisher, and that none of the scientists he consulted had ever witnessed, heard, or confirmed a fisher screaming. Despite the expert opinions, the woman remained respectfully unconvinced. She acknowledged the expertise but countered, “there are a lot of Vermonters that have heard fishers, and I just can’t believe that all these people who grew up in the woods are wrong.”
In Walden, Thoreau reflects on the relationship between scientific knowledge and the practical wisdom of those who spend their lives in nature, like hunters and fishermen. He writes, “We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.” But when science contradicts these deeply held beliefs, it’s tempting to ignore the new information.
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Weeks later, I’ve come to terms with the idea that fisher cats probably don’t scream. This realization has sparked a new question: how do myths like the fisher cat scream originate and persist? How could so many people – my childhood friend, my neighbors, the woman in Vermont, and myself – be so mistaken? And why are they so often called fisher cats?
I started by tackling the easier question: why “fisher cats”? And why “fishers” at all? Defenders of Wildlife explains that “Fishers eat snowshoe hares, rabbits, rodents and birds, and are one of the few specialized predators of porcupines. Fishers are effective hunters, but are also known to eat insects, nuts, and berries when prey is not available.” In short, they aren’t piscivores – they don’t eat fish. But otters do, and fishers do bear a slight resemblance to otters. Could this be the connection?
A more widely accepted explanation is that fishers resemble the European polecat. The polecat, also known as a ferret, was historically called “fitchet,” “fitch ferret,” or “fitchew.” When early American settlers encountered the fisher, they applied these familiar names. Over time, this evolved into “fisher.” As for the “cat” part, a common theory is that both fishers and cats are adept climbers. However, perhaps we should be cautious about accepting “popular explanations” when it comes to these elusive creatures.
Regarding the scream, my theory is this: fishers are inherently elusive, yet we know they inhabit our backyards, even venturing into urban areas like the Bronx. We are driven to find evidence of their presence. Lacking visual confirmation, we seek other signs. An ambiguous, disembodied shriek perfectly fits the role. Furthermore, fishers simply look like creatures capable of producing a bloodcurdling scream. Certain images of fishers, mouths open, teeth bared, evoke the very sound I always imagined they made.
The fisher’s secretive nature allows for its mythologization. A quick Google search for “fisher cat scream” (embracing both the misnomer and misinformation) reveals results like: “it sounds like a woman being murdered,” “it’s an omen of bad things to come,” and “keep a close watch on your small dogs.” One article, titled “Beware the Fisher,” dramatically warns, “You can hide your children and lock up your pets, but even then all may be lost. For there is no stopping the fisher!” The author, when addressing the screams, compares the fisher to “an unearthly tormented specter wandering the woods late at night.” He does concede, however, “There is no proof that these screams are coming from a fisher.”
The comment section of this article is particularly lively. Some readers refute the fisher’s negative reputation. Others, pet owners, vehemently warn against underestimating these “vicious killers” with their “dracula teeth.” Another article, “The Fisher: Elusive, Fast and a Porcupine’s Worst Nightmare,” features a similar debate. It’s easy to find endless cycles of rumors and rebuttals concerning fisher cats.
Fishers are often portrayed as harbingers of suburban doom – and to be clear, they are formidable predators. However, encountering one in person reveals a creature that is surprisingly small, possesses a quirky trot, and tends to disappear quickly.
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As I process the demystification of the fisher cat scream, I realize that this exploration touches on larger themes.
What is it that fuels my desire to know? Why am I so concerned with whether or not fisher cats scream – something seemingly inconsequential to daily life? Why do I feel compelled to be a secondhand witness, via a motion-sensing camera, to the hidden lives of the woods when I’m not there? There is room for mystery in our backyards, but my actions suggest I’m not doing a very good job of preserving it.
Perhaps “mystery” isn’t the right word. The fisher cat scream was never truly a mystery. It was something accepted as truth, “practically or instinctively known,” as Thoreau put it, despite the lack of concrete evidence. A “true humanity.” Maybe “anomaly” is a better term. Perhaps we are driven by an innate, unyielding desire to understand as much as we can. “Curiosity killed the cat,” the saying goes – and apologies for the repeated cat references – but does it also diminish the joy of discovery? In the pursuit of knowledge, do we sometimes risk dispelling our own “true humanity”?
Or perhaps our yearning to understand our animal neighbors stems from the same impulse that drives us to connect with our human neighbors. We seek to build relationships, to feel connected to the worlds of those around us, to share our world with them. Is this desire misguided when applied to animals? Does it feel almost impolite not to learn about the creatures living behind our homes? Do we feel slighted when this neighborliness isn’t reciprocated across species, as if our friendly gestures were ignored? If so, we shouldn’t. Squirrels don’t visit our bird feeders to become our friends; they want birdseed.
Similar to human relationships, there’s also the fear that familiarity with animals might lead to boredom. How many deer sightings are needed before a deer becomes “just another deer”? Is it childish to remain excited by deer when they become a regular sight? And is it so wrong to be childlike in this regard? Does a point arrive when there’s nothing left to learn, nothing left to be excited about?
I turned to my bookshelf for answers.
In his 1968 essay, “A Native Hill,” Wendell Berry describes leaving New York City for Kentucky, returning to “the few square miles in Kentucky that were mine by inheritance and birth and by the intimacy the mind makes with the place it awakens in.” Beyond what he was leaving behind, Berry worried about what he was returning to. He considered the possibility that “I already knew this place as well as I ever would.”
This fear proved unfounded. “But now I began to see the real abundance and richness of it,” Berry writes. “It is, I saw, inexhaustible in its history, in the details of its life, in its possibilities.” Sometimes, all that’s needed is to adjust our perspective, to re-examine what we’re looking for. In Berry’s case, he “began more seriously than ever to learn the names of things—the wild plants and animals, the natural processes, the local places—and to articulate my observations and memories.”
Coupled with this, there are the joys of spontaneity, which counteract the feeling of staleness that can arise from knowing a place too well. A fox crosses the yard. Snowfall on a tree branch glitters in the sunlight and breeze. A woodpecker starts working outside the window. We know the yard, the branch, the view from the window. These familiar elements create a backdrop for the unpredictable events that unfold.
John McPhee, in a piece for the New Yorker, expresses a related, somewhat improbable desire. He writes, “While I flossed in the morning, looking north through an upstairs bathroom window, I hoped to see a bear come out of the trees. If this seems quixotic, it was.” Bears are abundant in New Jersey, where McPhee lives – around 2,500, he notes – and “In recent years, bears have been spotted in every New Jersey county.” While the odds of seeing one aren’t high, it’s not impossible. (Spoiler: McPhee’s wife, Yolanda Whitman, eventually spots a bear from their living room.) The word “quixotic” is fitting. Our most quixotic hopes are often what keep life interesting.
After learning that fisher cats likely don’t scream, my quixotic hope became to witness this rumored phenomenon myself. I knew it was unlikely, but I couldn’t shake the desire. I imagined looking up into a tree and seeing a fisher. That fisher would look back at me and unleash a scream. The very improbability was the appeal – to see this elusive, shadowy predator in the treetops, shrieking.
Writing it out, it sounds absurd. But if these ridiculous hopes and absurdities fuel my curiosity, then I embrace them. This isn’t to say they are essential for curiosity; quite the opposite. It would be far more beneficial to focus on what is actually present, to study the tree, for example, instead of fantasizing about a screaming fisher in its branches. It would be better to follow Wendell Berry’s lead: What is the tree’s name? How old might it be? How tall?
To return to Walden once more, Thoreau explains how philosophers and poets often approach nature “with expectation.” This preconception limits their perception. They project their expectations onto nature and inevitably find them unmet. To truly appreciate the unexpected – which is what we truly seek – we must avoid this tendency. People who approach nature without expectations find nature “not afraid to exhibit herself to them.” Yolanda Whitman, sitting in her living room, devoid of bear-related hopes, comes to mind.
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In my determined, albeit biased, search for confirmation, I did find some videos online purporting to show fisher cats screaming. One video depicted a young, presumably injured fisher; another showed a fisher at a Humane Society on Cape Cod. Both animals were indeed screaming. The screams didn’t sound quite right, but they were enough to prevent me from feeling completely certain about anything. Roland Kays, who conducted extensive research on fishers, including their alleged screams, summarized the situation with the maxim “an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
Whether the noises I’ve heard were fisher cats or foxes remains unconfirmed. In a way, this uncertainty is a positive outcome. As long as the question remains open, it is, to borrow Berry’s word again, “inexhaustible.” Logic points to foxes; Thoreau’s “true humanity” leans towards fisher cats. A case can be made for both. Just as often as a fisher appears on my trail camera, so does a fox – sometimes just a fleeting blur of a bushy tail disappearing behind a tree, or an overexposed close-up revealing large ears and a whiskered snout.
My exploration, sparked by the fisher cat scream myth, has led me to a broader understanding. The boundaries of my explorations are physically defined by stone walls and “No Trespassing” signs. Yet, my backyard – and all our backyards – will always hold unexpected discoveries. Physical limits don’t restrict inquiry, and anything, from the way poison ivy vines climb a tree trunk to a woodland shriek – whether fox or fisher – can be an invitation to those open to the unexpected.
