Muskrat Division of Labor
Although muskrats are primarily nocturnal, you occasionally see them in the daytime, especially in the spring and fall. They often reside in ponds or marshes, where they live in the pond bank or build their own house out of mud, cattails and other available plant material. Muskrats are herbivores, favoring cattail roots, arrowhead, bur reed, pickerelweed and other aquatic vegetation. The pictured muskrat is not feeding, however — more often than not muskrats eat their food where they find it, especially during the warmer months. It is doing its share of parental care — this is the time of year when the first of several litters of muskrats are born. While the mother nurses her four or so young, the father spends time gathering bedding material for his offspring. The muskrat in this photograph spent a morning cutting and gathering several mouthfuls of grasses growing by the side of the pond. When he couldn’t fit one more blade of grass in his mouth he would scurry down the bank and disappear into a burrow which most likely led to a chamber where his young are being raised. Like their beaver cousins, muskrats tend to keep a tidy house and forage for fresh bedding for their young with some regularity.
Young Muskrat Feeding on Cattails
This young muskrat, probably about 2 months old, is still living with its family, but on its own as far as feeding itself. Typically, muskrats eat a variety of aquatic vegetation as well as an occasional clam, frog, crayfish or fish. This particular muskrat dines almost exclusively on cattails. Getting at the choicest part of these plants, the roots and inner stems, requires some serious digging in the mud, which is evident from the muskrat’s face in one of the photographs. Long nails on their front feet equip these rodents for this arduous task.Mink Slide
Like their cousins the otters, mink will slide down snowy inclines on their bellies, as the slide in this photograph illustrates. They are excellent swimmers and can swim underwater to a depth of 18 feet or for a distance of 100 yards. Look for tracks and slides along streams, in cattail marshes and in swamps, where they forage for crayfish, frogs, fish, small mammals and invertebrates. One of its largest prey is the muskrat. A male mink (larger and stronger than a female mink) captures one by wrapping its body around the muskrat and then biting its neck. Mink make the most of their meals, recycling what they can – the winter nest of one mink consisted almost entirely of the fur of muskrats.
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