...sometimes, you'll find, you get what you need! (Like a Muskrat!)

It was late afternoon last Friday when we decided to take a walk as an education staff team.

Ostensibly, we needed to ensure all of our geochaches were well-hidden and stocked with papers, pencils, and were securely waterproofed.  The caches are part of the "Blazing Your Trail" program (see my last post).  Fortunately for nature, but unfortunately for our team, concerned visitors had been removing the caches and throwing them away as someone else's litter, keeping FortWhyte Alive clean and pristine - but making geocaching slightly difficult.

(We've now switched to a less-litter-looking format for our caches.  If you are a visitor, and find a coffee can in the woods, with a notepad inside, its supposed to be there.  I thank you in advance!)

We walked through the beautiful south wind and growing shadows of the November afternoon.  If we encountered visitors on the trail, we had a chance to chat, find out what our visitors had seen during the afternoon, and generally enjoy the walk.

One couple shared the location of a freshly-killed muskrat.  We decided to investigate.

Lying on the trail, right where we'd been told we'd find the recently-deceased muskrat, was...a recently-deceased muskrat!

I know this find is likely not exciting to most people.  In fact, some might feel a little revulsion upon finding a fresh ex-muskrat.  Reacting in quite the other direction, I was thrilled!  I've been waiting a LONG time to find a muskrat!

Though muskrats are a common FortWhyte Alive animal, we have not had a mounted muskrat in our Touch Museum for about 18 months.  Our old muskrat had seen long service, and over time, had simply been touched to the point of no longer being a fur-bearing animal.  The old mount was retired, with full honours, but no new muskrat had "stepped up" to the roel.

Our policy is to never kill, trap, or otherwise harm an animal to add a specimen to our collection.  We depend on good fortune, natural cycles, and motor-vehicle/animal interactions to fill our Museum.

The muskrat in question seemed to have been caught by a bird of prey, and dropped.  (Perhaps the bird's eyes and stomach were bigger than it's wings...the muskrat is a fairly hefty fellow!)  In a few months, we will have another mount on display, allowing for visitors to explore the adaptations of the species without ever having to harass a living muskrat.

Mick Jagger summed up Mother Nature quite well.  You can't always get what you want (or, when you want it)...but if you try sometimes, you get what you need!