21 March 2007 - Can A Muskrat Get Some Love?!?

21 March 2007 – Can A Muskrat Get Some Love?!?

Driving home from depositing my wife at the airport this morning I couldn’t help but notice the large amount of road-kill littering the sides of the highway.  This is a busy time for animals.  It has been common all winter to see deer carcasses along the roadways.  The crows which over-wintered and the turkey vultures which are just returning are grateful for this bounty. Smaller birds such as jays and chickadees also take advantage of the feast.  As it warms up, raccoons and possums begin to move more about the countryside and add their bodies to the smorgasbord.  However, one animal that I see dead along roadsides at this time of year never ceases to garner my attention – the muskrat.  This time at the boundary of winter and spring is the only time of the year in which I see large numbers of dead muskrats.

Muskrats and I are well acquainted.  When I was younger, we used to trap them for their fur. (Please, spare me any anti-fur/animal rights rhetoric.  It was a good source of additional income to a family that didn’t have a lot.)  Later, I watched baby muskrats play not feet from me as I fly fished for bass and bluegill.  I have had them swim alongside a canoe for a hundred yards down the river, as curious about me as I was about them. Of the animals that I see regularly, they are one of my favorites to watch.   

I notice and admire them all year round.  In the summer months I see them almost every day at Millpond Park, cutting cattails and rushes, digging up water lilies, and cropping grasses from the lawns.  Their houses are very easy to spot right now, dotting marshes like miniature beaver lodges.  They are industrious little buggers, but they can also be surprising.  Last summer I watched one attack a flock of ducks repeatedly – presumably he was looking for a meal.    Just two weeks ago, I watched a muskrat on the ice at the river’s edge as he stripped bark from overhanging branches.  However, this is the only time of year that I see where they have unsuccessfully tried to cross the road on a regular basis.

There are three reasons that I can think of why they are so active and adventurous this time of year that they would try to cross a four lane highway with concrete dividers.  First, food is a little scarce to come by right now.  Muskrats do store some food for the winter, just like beavers, but those supplies are gone or going fast.  Their favorite wetland plants have yet to begin their growing season in earnest, therefore they must search farther from home for meals.  Second, parents are pushing the last of the previous year’s young out of the nest.  These young often seek out greener pastures, so to speak.  Some of them just seem to develop a sense of wanderlust and will travel miles in search of a new home range.  Others are more sedate and will just travel to the other side of the pond, lake, or river.

The final reason that muskrats seem to be so adventurous right now – adventurous enough to face a gauntlet of commuters, panel vans, and semi trucks – is pure and simple lust.  As the ice melts and spring arrives with its green grasses and cattail shoots, the desire to mate begins to take hold.  They will have several litters of young throughout the spring and summer, but now is the time they move about the most, seeking out new mates and new unexploited territories.  This wanderlust will soon pass.  Soon they will be sedate homeowners and parents; paddling about the marsh, engineering small projects of mud, grass, and reed.  But for now as the first heady days of spring arrive each muskrat thinks of himself as Magellan or Casanova, out to conquer brave new worlds.