I spent a few minutes on my walk to work this morning watching a muskrat. Hunched under the footbridge uprooting plants, he didn’t mind as I clopped along in my optimistically-chosen high heels.
He was intent on his business, wringing small hands around in the mud, looking for the muskrat version of breakfast, a bagel, coffee.
In honor of the first Water Rat of Spring, here’s an excerpt from The Wind in the Willows:
When they got home, the Rat made a bright fire in the parlor, and planted the Mole in an arm-chair in front of it, having fetched down a dressing-gown and slippers for him, and told him river stories till supper-time.
about herons, and how particular they were whom they spoke to
Very thrilling stories they were, too, to an earth-dwelling animal like Mole. Stories about weirs, and sudden floods, and leaping pike; and about herons, and how particular they were whom they spoke to; and about adventures down drains, and night-fishings with Otter, or excursions far afield with Badger.
What Makes the Muskrat Guard His Musk?
Courage! What makes the Hottentots so hot? What puts the “ape” in apricot? What have they got that I ain’t got?
-Courage!