All living creatures on this planet need to eat others in order to survive. Only plants exist from sun and water alone - and the absorption of minerals from the earth. Many creatures survive off of plants including the muskrat which lives near water and marshes. While these creatures look like large rats they are actually more related to mice and voles, and behave like little beavers, building nests by the water for their young. This is where we think a young muskrat was taken from probably by a hawk this morning.
While muskrats are herbivores and survive on grasses, hawks are predators and need mice, chipmunks and muskrats babies in order to survive. This little one was laying on her back and twitching under a sapling in my friend's yard. The hawk had probably dropped her hoping for a nice breakfast, but she wasn't quite dead. Rather than put her out of her misery immediately I put her in a box with some water and grasses and she revived enough to eat a few nuts and began to chatter at me. I could see her long front teeth and was careful not to touch her lest she bite and had rabies, but she was very small like a mouse and it appeared her lower limbs no longer worked. She spent the afternoon in the shade eating grass and almond slivers and appeared to have gained enough vigor to be moving about the small container by hitching with her front paws. A feisty little thing. I had hopes of setting up a hamster cage and nursing her back to health; perhaps even releasing her back to the wild. She was safely tucked into the dark shed in a nest of rags and grasses for the night and I was relieved to find her still breathing and rooting about in the morning. My friend put a sign on the door reading, "Muskrat Hospice Do Not Disturb." He was right. Two hours later I found she had died quietly in the little nest. Survival of the fittest can be very cruel, but it was probably for the best. What kind of a life would it be for a crippled muskrat in a hamster cage? She found her final resting place under an apple tree. RIP muskrat.
Sometimes the nature of survival is cruel and sometimes it is to our advantage. While I was rescuing the baby muskrat, the fisherman went out into Wellfleet harbor today and caught 30 mackeral from the school that dodge about making good bait for the sharks.
Beautiful, silvery fish. Cleaning and gutting of them is every bit as brutal as the slamming of baby rodents done by birds of prey. But then these fish became our dinner - absolutely delicious!
While muskrats are herbivores and survive on grasses, hawks are predators and need mice, chipmunks and muskrats babies in order to survive. This little one was laying on her back and twitching under a sapling in my friend's yard. The hawk had probably dropped her hoping for a nice breakfast, but she wasn't quite dead. Rather than put her out of her misery immediately I put her in a box with some water and grasses and she revived enough to eat a few nuts and began to chatter at me. I could see her long front teeth and was careful not to touch her lest she bite and had rabies, but she was very small like a mouse and it appeared her lower limbs no longer worked. She spent the afternoon in the shade eating grass and almond slivers and appeared to have gained enough vigor to be moving about the small container by hitching with her front paws. A feisty little thing. I had hopes of setting up a hamster cage and nursing her back to health; perhaps even releasing her back to the wild. She was safely tucked into the dark shed in a nest of rags and grasses for the night and I was relieved to find her still breathing and rooting about in the morning. My friend put a sign on the door reading, "Muskrat Hospice Do Not Disturb." He was right. Two hours later I found she had died quietly in the little nest. Survival of the fittest can be very cruel, but it was probably for the best. What kind of a life would it be for a crippled muskrat in a hamster cage? She found her final resting place under an apple tree. RIP muskrat.
Sometimes the nature of survival is cruel and sometimes it is to our advantage. While I was rescuing the baby muskrat, the fisherman went out into Wellfleet harbor today and caught 30 mackeral from the school that dodge about making good bait for the sharks.
Beautiful, silvery fish. Cleaning and gutting of them is every bit as brutal as the slamming of baby rodents done by birds of prey. But then these fish became our dinner - absolutely delicious!
wow, nature! and a yummy meal. We have been watching Planet Earth 2 and there are many scenes of predators stalking/chasing/attacking their prey. I found myself rooting for the predators quite often especially when they were on the verge of starvation and had families to feed.
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