A long
time ago, in the early spring, I told you about one of my first walks of the
new season down by the local pond. I told you about the ducks, grebes and geese
I was lucky enough to see there, along with the Red-Winged Blackbirds swooping
about overhead. I was even happily surprised to spy a little muskrat paddling
around the water. I wondered if I would see the little guy again, and what he
would do there for the rest of the warm months. Would he build a little house?
Turn up with a family? I thought you might like to know how that turned out.
Well at
first, no one even truly believed me that he was there. And why would they? It
was such a tiny pond and we hadn’t seen one there before. Then, one day, a
walking companion and I were strolling along the shore when I cried out:
“Look!
There he is!”
“What?”
“The
muskrat! Look!”
“Where?”
“Right
there! Don’t you see?”
My
companion peered between the bulrushes and, sure enough, there he was, a little
brown, soggy, sausage-shaped lump with a head, floating on the surface of the
water. He wasn’t going anywhere. Didn’t appear to be doing anything. He was
just simply . . . bobbing. My companion whipped out a cell phone and grabbed a
few shots, and that was it. I had been proven correct. No one doubted me again
for the rest of the summer.
Then,
not too long after that, I was out by myself for a good afternoon stretch,
strolling along the same length of shore. I got to the far side of the pond,
walking past the bulrushes, when I came to a spot where a, perhaps,
well-meaning but woefully misguided individual had dumped a whole heap of rice.
Didn’t even scatter it or toss it into the water. Just left it heaped on the
shore like a child’s sand castle. As I got close, a flock of little brown
sparrows cheeped and squeaked and, in a bit of a panic, abandoned their rice
heap and took off. My view of the heap was a bit obscured by the reeds, but I
became suddenly aware of something else thumping around over there, bulrushes
swaying slightly. I got around the plants just in time to watch a big, brown,
soggy creature, like an overgrown mouse, gallop across the rocky shore away
from me, jump into the pond with a SPLASH! and swim away.
I stood
there and stared. The muskrat! And he had been just inches away from my toes!
As the
weeks wore away, I came to know him as “Musky.” (Okay, so I’m not so creative
in the nickname department.) Musky was far from finished with me for the
summer.
It
wasn’t too much later that I was back down by the pond with some relatives. We
were standing there, leaning on the railing, watching the mallards and their
wee babes, when I became aware of a ripple trail near the edge of the lake to
the left of where we stood.
“Where?”
asked one of my relatives.
“Over
there.” I pointed to where Musky still paddled towards.
“Oh,”
said my companion. Then, in a moment: “There’s another one over there!”
I
turned around. My companion was pointing in completely the opposite direction
from where Musky was. Sure enough, there was another little furry body plowing
its way through the water towards us. Then, from nowhere it seemed, suddenly
there was third furry body in the water. This last one was identical to the
first two - - only much, much smaller. Musky had found his true love, and
together they had made a darling little Musky Jr! We watched in delight as the
family swam back and forth along the edge of the pond carrying mouthfuls of
plant life. Long, green reeds hung out of either side of their mouths,
sometimes so much they had to swim with their heads at an odd angle to make
room for their plants. Probably building their house, we reasoned, though we
never spotted the lodge.
Mostly
they went about their work and didn’t bother each other, but once, as Musky got
close to his family, he swam up to Musky Jr. and leaned it. We watched in
wonder as the two nuzzled noses affectionately. Mother Nature leaves no
creature uncared for.
But
they didn’t have the pond to themselves. When Musky got too close the Mallard family,
Mama Mallard had no qualms about darting across the water, head stuck out,
quacking sharply at him. Musky wasn’t at all phased. He simply swam,
respectfully, around the chicks and went about his work.
Well,
the migrators are starting to move, and some of the trees are changing colour.
Nevertheless, the next time I was in the area, I stopped to peer across the
pond. Not a duck or a goose in sight. Just still quite water. Then, to my
right, that tell-tale ripple trail.
Musky
paddled away across the still surface and disappeared into the thick bulrushes.
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