Who could it be? ©

 

My apologies to Zaboomafoo, but my children loved this show and the mystery animal song, when they were little: I couldn’t help myself.  Picture by the Author.

 

The mystery animal tracks found on our hike, picture by the Author

 

A close-up of the mystery animal tracks found on our hike, picture by the Author

I was on a hike with my son, when we came across some tracks made by a mystery animal.  They wandered along a rivulet, near a drainage pipe from a pond and then bounded across a dirt road.  We all guessed what mystery animal might have made them, with one of the people who were with me, speculating that they must have been made by a martin, because of the bounding nature of the tracks, where they crossed the road.  I didn’t think so, because I could see the drag mark of a tail, however, I did not know what the mystery animal was either.

So, I took some pictures to study when I got home, and we got on with our hike.

When I got home, I looked at the pictures I had taken.  The more I looked at the tracks and the tail mark and thought about where I had found the tracks, the more I thought that a muskrat must have made them.  However, to be sure, I got out my copy of Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide: Animal Tracks and my copy of A Guide to Nature in Winter: Northeast and North Central North America and did some research.

The mystery animal tracks found on our hike, explained.  Picture by the Author.

 

Figure 88, p 176, Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide: Animal Tracks, by Olaus J.Murie

 

The mystery animal tracks found on our hike, explained.  Picture by the Author.

The tracks and the tail marks certainly looked like the illustrations in Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide: Animal Tracks.  To be sure I measured the straddle of the tracks and consulted Donald Stokes’, A Guide to Nature in Winter: Northeast and North Central North America (for more on the importance of straddle in identifying tracks, see “Who Came To Visit Me Last Night…”, HERE).  The stride of the tracks was about four inches long, but more importantly the straddle was three and a half inches wide, both of these measurements are average for muskrats.

 

A Guide to Nature in Winter: Northeast and North Central North America, p. 292

The mystery animal tracks found on our hike, explained.  Picture by the Author.

So I can confidently say that the mystery animal, who I did see, was an ondatra zibethica, or North American Muskrat.

 

p 175, Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide: Animal Tracks, by Olaus J.Murie

Sources

Murie, Olaus J., Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide: Animal Tracks, [The Easton Press, Norwalk, Connecticut, 1974]

Stokes, Donald W.; A Guide to Nature in Winter: Northeast and North Central North America, [Little Brown & Company, New York, New York, 1976] p. 281-287