Handbook of Nature-Study · Lesson LIV · Topic 6: Mammal study
54. The muskrat
Goal: Your child can describe how the muskrat's webbed hind feet, flat tail and thick fur suit it for life in water, and recognize its tracks and lodges.
You'll need
- Binoculars
- A marsh, cattail pond, slow stream or canal
- A ruler for tracks
- Nature notebook
What's in the book
The leading thought, the method (begin with tracks along creeks and ponds and visits to muskrat lodges; Comstock also used a live trapped muskrat or a dead one from a hunter, and warns that the muskrat bites severely) and seventeen questions on its tracks and tail-marks, size and shape, eyes, ears and teeth, legs and webbed feet, fur and tail, swimming and diving, food and "dining room", its winter lodge and bank burrow, enemies, young, and themes comparing it with the beaver.
The lesson, step by step
When and where
All year, at marshes, cattail ponds, slow streams and canals. Muskrats are most active at dawn and dusk. In late fall and winter look for their lodges: dome-shaped piles of cattails and mud in the water. In snow or soft mud, look for tracks with a tail drag line between them.
Safety: never touch, feed or corner a wild mammal, and never handle a dead one. Wild animals can bite and can carry rabies and other diseases. Watch from a distance with binoculars. Comstock herself warns that the muskrat "inflicts very severe wounds and is never willing to be handled." An adult stays close by near water.
Keep the big idea in mind
Read this to yourself:
The muskrat, while a true rodent, is fitted for life in the water more than for life upon the land. Its hind feet are webbed for use as oars and its tail is used as a rudder. It builds lodges of mud, cat-tails and rushes in which it spends the winter.
Tracks
In what locality have you discovered the tracks of the muskrat?
What mark does the tail make in the snow or mud? Judging by its imprint, should you think the muskrat's tail was long or short, bare or brushy, slender or strong?
Measure one print and the space between steps, as Comstock asks.
Watch one swim
Sit quietly at the water's edge at dusk.
How much of the muskrat can you see when it is swimming? How long can it stay under water when diving?
Count the seconds when it dives. Look for the V-shaped ripple behind its head.
Made for water
Do you think the muskrat is better fitted to live in the water than on land? How is it fitted to live in the water in the following particulars: Feet? Tail? Fur?
Use a picture for the close-up parts: webbed hind feet and a tail flattened from side to side.
Lodges and food
What is the food of the muskrat? Where does it find it?
Comstock asks about the lodge: its size, where built, of what material. Describe one you can see from shore, and don't walk on the ice to reach it.
Put it into words
Ask your child how a muskrat is like a beaver and how it is different. Then share the leading thought.
Nature notebook
Draw a muskrat swimming, with its V-shaped ripple, and a lodge in the cattails. Add a sketch of a track with the tail line.
Afterwards
Comstock suggests reading beaver stories alongside this lesson, because the two animals live so much alike.
Tip
Ice over marshes is often thin, even in deep winter. Stay on shore.