If you build it, they will come.
Is this your typical muskrat habitat?
On Sunday, looking for more caterpillars and exuviae in Brooklyn Bridge Park, we ran into a couple of muskrats, Ondatra zibethicus, munching away on the new plantings.
Yes, we were surprised. One of the animals was a youngster, and some comments found at the Brooklyn Heights Blog suggest there are, or were, several babies.
Muskrats are mostly vegetarians. They are not unknown in contemporary Brooklyn (see Four Sparrow Marsh), for they are reputed to be a hardy and adaptable species, like Brooklynites in general. These seemed unperturbed by the crowds of people and dogs passing by. Typically, the majority of passersby didn’t notice — you’ll have noted the unhelpful attitude of the Heights blogger’s exclaiming that “actual wildlife” exists all around us. Such clliched thought merely encourages ignorance.
Fieldnotes: Muskrats
3 responses to “Fieldnotes: Muskrats”
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Adorable lil guys – nice photos. I am fond of muskrats. My father, not so much. We lived for a few years in Connecticut when I was a very little kid There was a small, wildlife-filled pond at the end of the grass. One year, muskrats took over, digging holes all along the bank and wrecking the grass. My dad borrowed a neighbor’s 22 rifle and sat out there for hours,trying to pop them off. Not sure if he got any. Now he wages on-going, gunless wars out on Long Island on phragmites and white-tail deer.
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[…] I was walking down Furman Street, which parallels the new Brooklyn Bridge Park and is half shadowed by the howl of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Passing one of the few buildings left from the days of dockland glory, I looked up. (The building is a garage on the 1929 map, between the old Ward Line and Nippon Yusin Kaisha piers, detailed at the indispensable Forgotten New York blog.) On top of the one-story building were the unmistakable silhouettes of cattails. They looked positively sculptural, and my first thought was: is that art? There is so much art today that takes its inspiration from nature; I thought this was some kind of copy cattail art. It was, after all, a very cold March day, and most of last year’s cattails are looking pretty ragged by now. Plus, cattails are a wetlands species, which meant I really wanted to get a look at that roof. Luckily, the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, vibrating from the BQE as always, overlooks the area. The cattails are the clump on the right.There are a number of genus Typha cattails in the world. The common domestic one is Typha latifolia, and it’s edible. Muskrats, for instance, love it. Muskrats by the way, have been known to show up in Brooklyn Bridge Park. […]
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[…] at Backyard & Beyond, we get excited by a woodchuck, some muskrats, and a dozen cattails sprouting from a roof. The return of seals to New York Harbor puts a spring […]
Backyard and Beyond 
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