Muskrats Build Lodges Too..

It is often assumed that only the beaver builds lodges. But this is not the case. I took this picture the other day of  a beautiful looking little muskrat lodge.  Roughly three feet tall and woven together and mixed with mud this mound is made from reeds, cattails and grasses taken from the surrounding  area. The inner part of it is hollowed out, with an entrance only accessible underwater. During the cold winter months it will become the home for roughly a family of five or more. Unlike beavers muskrats do not store an underwater food cache to get them through the winter. Instead they glean their food - various grasses and crustaceans - swimming along little canal like trails,  underneath the ice. These trails were created when ice was not present. On warmer winter days, if they can find a hole,  they will even come up above the ice and sun themselves and eat on little mounds of reeds and grasses adjacent to their lodge. These little feeding platforms are known as " pushups". Muskrats play an integral part in wetland ecology. Their foraging activity creates disturbances that allow for mature grasses and sedges to be replaced with younger growth sometimes of a different species than was present before. In the picture above you can see, both in the foreground and the background the open areas that were created by their activity. They are like little "roto- tillers " helping to revitalize the wetlands they live in. Usually, they recolonize old beaver lodges or burrows. However, sometimes when beavers are active in the same area they will just move into the same lodge where the beavers are present and peacefully coexist, even raising a family at the same time as the beavers. Pretty much just free loading off the hard work of the beavers! David Attenborough in his great documentary Life Of Mammals  does a great job of showing this all in action. However when beavers are not present and no defined banks ( with old burrows) surround the wetland ,the muskrats will busy themselves and put in the sweat equity to build one of their own lodges. Compared to a beaver lodge they're the equivalent of an old tar paper shack - but hey they work!