Boysenberry Pie

MINK SPERM TESTS

As a freshman at Stanford majoring in chemical engineering, my most important, but certainly not favorite, class was chemistry.  As part of the lab we learned to bend glass tubing into smooth curves and to pull it into thin tapered tubes that could be cut and polished to become eyedroppers.  I was there, self supported on scholarships, feeling guilty that I was not working to help support my family.  I was eager to help my father with his new mink ranch endeavor, in any way I could.

Of course it was convenient to answer questions from my wealthy Stanford peers about what my father did, “Oh, he is a mink rancher.”  That sounded impressive.  I didn’t have to explain that he was a former carpenter, permanently disabled due to a massive heart attack the year before.  This sounds a bit devious now, but at the time I was mostly naive and innocent, clueless about social climbing as well as sexual orientation.

Mink come into heat only once a year, for a few days.  So if pregnancy is not achieved, a year of expensive food and pampered care is wasted.  My father bought a microscope and I made special eyedroppers so thin that the tip could fit into a mink’s vagina.  Each mink is kept in a separate cage all year until mating time.  When a female seems to be in heat, she and a male are placed together and must be watched to make sure that fighting is not excessive.  The male is about twice as large as the female and serious injury or death is a possibility.  If there is more passion than aggression, the male holds the female by the back of the neck with his teeth and inserts his penis into her vagina.  They stay coupled for several minutes, sometimes an hour.

Even if it appeared to be a happy encounter, healthy sperm may not have been delivered to the right place.  Sometimes the anus instead of the vagina is entered.  Other times the male is not producing live sperm.

That is where my eyedroppers came in.  The female was held with thick gloves and a small sample was carefully taken from her vagina.  The drop was examined under a microscope.  Live sperm swimming frantically around indicated that the mating was successful and that three to five baby mink could be expected in a few months.

Of course, being a horny, curious teenager, I checked my own sperm periodically, just to make sure that they were good swimmers.