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.
