A Muskrat Menace

So, it was 3:00am on Saturday night. I was sitting up late with my mom playing video games. Well, I was playing and she was buying stuff online as usual, I think. Out of the blue, mom decided that she wanted to feed the stray cats outside. My mom is a night owl, so don’t ask me why she gets wild hairs like these in the middle of the night. All I know is that by 3:00am, I’m half delirious from lack of sleep. Anyways, she got up to go out into the backyard and as she opened the back door, all of a sudden, she started screaming her head off saying, "It got in! It’s big, and it got in!" For all I knew it was an axe-murderer or something, so I jumped up and raced into the kitchen to see what she was yelling about. That’s when I saw it. It was black, as big as my cats, and it was running as fast as lightening into the dining room. I thought, "Holy crap! What in the world did mom just let into the house? Was it some kind of nuclear-sized rat or what?"

A Menacing Muskrat

 

I told mom, to keep an eye on it and get some towels as I raced upstairs to get a cat carrier. There was no way in hell I was going to pick that thing up with my bare hands. When I came back down with the carrier, mom told me it was under the sideboard in the dining room. I peeked under there, and sure enough, there it was. It was mean! It held its little front feet up and bared its teeth menacingly at everyone. It jumped on my mom’s Bischon (dog), but didn’t bite him, thankfully. And it also jumped at me! It was certainly on the larger end of the muskrat scale and looked really healthy. This one had to be at least 4 or 5lbs.

So fortified with the cat carrier and several towels, I chased it back into the kitchen where I finally cornered it and scooped it up, while my mom stood on the sofa and screamed. Absolutely no help at all...sigh. The muskrat was pretty scared, too though, because it chattered it’s teeth together; I really felt sorry for it. I think both it and I were glad to see it free in the backyard once again. I know mom was glad because she finally got to come down off the sofa....LOL

If you've ever wondered what exactly a muskrat is, now you know! I also found a page in Wikipedia about them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muskrat . Apparently, it lives in the stream next to my mom’s house. That’s the only place we could figure it would come from since it is an aquatic animal. Better luck next time, Muskrat!