Do the jitterbug at a muskrat land

May 10, 2024 3:41 AM

The Waning Reign of the Wetland Architect We Barely Know (Hint: Not a Beaver) Little-appreciated, semiaquatic, and cute-as-hell, muskrats can survive almost anywhere. So where are they? (Brandon Keim for Hakai Magazine)

Since the early 1970s, muskrat populations appeared to have fallen by at least one-half in 34 US states. In a handful of states, the collapse was near-total, coming in between 90 and 99 percent.

Muskrats remain fairly common overall—no official population count exists, but it’s safe to ballpark within the millions throughout their range—and in some places, they still thrive, with as many lodges per wetland hectare as there are homes in a leafy suburban subdivision; researchers don’t fear their extinction, but the overall trend is deeply troubling. It is also mysterious.

posted by hydropsyche (21 comments total)

Interesting, as beavers have surged back into many areas they had been long absent from. Just the other day I saw David Attenborough showing muskrats sharing a lodge with beavers over the winter, and paying 'rent' by sharing food. Is that deal off? Or maybe they just lag the beaver return, and will be coming back soon.
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:51 AM on May 10 [1 favorite]

For more information on the muskrat, contact the Canadian Wildlife Service in Ottawa.
posted by pracowity at 5:21 AM on May 10 [6 favorites]

Their nominal association with an off kilter industrialist has driven them into hiding.
posted by fairmettle at 5:23 AM on May 10 [3 favorites]

pracowity: For more information on the muskrat, contact the Canadian Wildlife Service in Ottawa.
posted by Clever User Name at 6:10 AM on May 10 [4 favorites]

1) insulted, the creature is, by association with vermin. I refer, of course, to the Elongated Muskrat

2) Metafilter: Hint: Not a Beaver
posted by lalochezia at 6:24 AM on May 10 [2 favorites]

Are the muskrats not making enough love?
(I had to say it.)
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:26 AM on May 10 [4 favorites]

I'll just leave this here.
(Willis Alan Ramsey "Muskrat Candlelight")
posted by Floydd at 8:54 AM on May 10

There's at least one population near me, in a ditch on a busy street just off the shopping strip in the county seat. Sometimes they get hit by cars :(
posted by Lawn Beaver at 9:02 AM on May 10 [1 favorite]

Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five - Muskrat Ramble
posted by pracowity at 9:23 AM on May 10 [1 favorite]

Interesting, as beavers have surged back into many areas they had been long absent from.
SaltySalticid: that's exactly what I was thinking. I study the effects of our urban beavers here in Atlanta, who are booming in population numbers, and I'm intrigued by what factors would be impacting muskrats but not beavers.
posted by hydropsyche at 10:08 AM on May 10 [1 favorite]

I live in a small rural village. Our lot is 4.5 acres. We're having a swimming pond dug in a low spot at the back I shared this with a friend who used to live here, who has a swimming pond on their place a few miles away Her first question was whether we knew how we to deal with muskrats. It seems that they, without question, trap and kill them because their dens erode embankments.

I recall this same attitude toward muskrats from my dad, on the family farm back in Ontario. There was no question that muskrats were elusive pests to be exterminated.

What's the problem here? Humans. We are the assholes.

I'm grateful for this article and I pledge to you all here that no muskrats will be harmed if they find it fitting to set up homes in our pond. We will learn to live together. We will not be assholes.
posted by kneecapped at 11:36 AM on May 10 [1 favorite]

I've just had a quick internet browse about it, so I'm no expert, but I wonder if it's partly because the beaver is somewhat protected and is seen as a formerly endangered species that is beneficial to restoring environments, while the muskrat is seen as a pest you can and should just get rid of? Depending on where you are, a landowner can just go out and shoot or trap a muskrat any time of the year without trouble, whereas some places protect beavers. There are lots of hits for searches like how to get rid of muskrats and beavers, so I'm not sure which is seen as a bigger "threat" by landowners.
posted by pracowity at 11:39 AM on May 10

I was confused as to why I was spotting more than one family of beavers on our (very small) lake, when I knew how territorial they are. Finally I figured out the ones I had been seeing on the upstream end of the lake were, in fact, muskrats! They now grumble at me and stare when I walk past them to fetch firewood at night. When they jump into the lake they sound like they enter like a cannon-ball, not a diver. So far none of them have snatched my wallet.
posted by WaylandSmith at 12:27 PM on May 10

In his review of muskrat ecosystem impacts, Ahlers describes how these disturbances produce dramatic increases in plant species richness. One study suggested that muskrats were primarily responsible for an increase of more than 70 percent in the variety of plants found in the disturbed areas of a cattail marsh; by grazing on abundant plants that would otherwise become dominant, muskrats also create space for rare plants to grow. [...] One had a broken leg and stayed in their hideout during the weeks it took to heal. At feeding times, his sister would emerge, fetch him a piece of apple or some other delectable treat, and then go back for her own serving before joining him.

sure sure I'm happy to, once again, have a one-sided love of yet another woodland critter that would be absolutely terrified of my presence, this is healthy and normal
posted by paimapi at 2:23 PM on May 10 [1 favorite]

In the 90s we lived in an apartment complex in suburban Minnesota on a lake. Once, while walking around the complex, I heard some rustling in a large window well for the underground garage. There was a muskrat down there, with no means to climb back up 4 ft of corrugated steel. I couldn't find a downed tree branch big enough to support it climbing back down. I put on gloves and jumped down into the well. The muskrat cowered in a corner and I scooped it up quick, like one of our cats. I dumped it outside the well and it waddled back to the marsh at the edge of the lake, without so much as a thank you.

I don't think I would have tried that with a beaver.
posted by Ber at 3:09 PM on May 10

"nutria" no results
That seems like the obvious possibility, but on to reading the article.
posted by ockmockbock at 4:02 PM on May 10

Well, I can tell you what happened to to the population in Delaware...
posted by jburka at 4:15 PM on May 10

I wonder if it's partly because the beaver is somewhat protected and is seen as a formerly endangered species that is beneficial to restoring environments, while the muskrat is seen as a pest you can and should just get rid of?

Where I live in Georgia USA, beavers are seen as a pest you can and should just get rid of. It is legal to kill them any time, and it is illegal to relocate them (even though ecologists are strongely advocating for relocating for restoration purposes). And yet the beaver are booming here, in spite of the all out war many Georgians are waging on them.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:35 PM on May 10

Brandon Keim is a wonderful writer on topics near and dear to me. He writes with such compassion and sympathy. I highly recommend his book The Eye of the Sandpiper, which contains the most poignant essay about 9/11 that I have ever read.
posted by criticalyeast at 7:17 PM on May 10

Muskrats and beavers are just another example of how the city of Boston is becoming a wildlife refuge (along with all the turkeys, coyotes, rabbits, eagles and deer - there are Deer Crossing signs now on some Boston parkways).

There's a small family of muskrats that lives under the boathouse at Jamaica Pond, at least when not swimming around the pond (I assume they compete with the cormorants, great blue herons and snapping turtles for the fish the state stocks the pond with), and there are muskrats in the Charles River at Millennium Park in West Roxbury (along with beavers both there and along Sawmill Creek, which feeds into the Charles).
posted by adamg at 7:29 PM on May 10 [1 favorite]

I have been reading Annie Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek", and muskrat stalking was one of her major activities on her nature walks around Tinker Creek. This report on their population decline is a sad addendum to the book, but it's still nice to learn more about what muskrats do.
posted by of strange foe at 2:13 PM on May 15 [1 favorite]