Muskrats Constructing Lodges
Muskrats, in addition to digging bank dens, also build lodges in which to live. Muskrat lodges resemble beaver lodges, but are usually much smaller (up to eight feet high, and four feet wide) and are made of vegetation, not sticks, like beaver lodges. Most lodge construction occurs in May and early June, and again in October. Typically they are built in no more than two feet of water. A single dry chamber (entrance below, chamber above the water line) houses a pair of muskrats, and often several litters of young (the mother adds a chamber for each litter). Even though the walls of a muskrat lodge are up to a foot thick, mink, foxes and coyotes often dig into them in the winter. Two or three smaller versions of a lodge, called “pushups,” serve as protected feeding platforms.
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