MUSKRAT LOVE by todd barnes

One of the most memorable and enjoyable times of my life was running trap lines along the shores and marshes of North Bay with my Great-Grandfather and Dad. Trapping was a traditional and necessary way for most watermen and farmers around Back Bay to make ends meet during the off-season. There were no crops to be tended to aside from the occasional turnip or rutabaga, and duck season was all but over.   The money from the furs made it possible to pay for school lunches, cover the electric bill, go out to get a sugar cone ice cream at High�s and in many cases, it kept the family together through the long winter. Every farm had a secluded corner of their barn with 100 or so traps hanging from a peg that had been doused with old cylinder oil for preservation during the summer. Some of the traps were second or third generation, and had definitely seen better days. As a child, nothing brought a bigger smile to my face than to get a dozen brand new traps for Christmas or my birthday.

Most children my age would lay in bed at night thinking about Christmas morning or the excitement of not having to go to school due to an unexpected, overnight snowstorm. I did not. My last and only thoughts during the winter months before falling asleep were visions of muskrats (rats), mink, raccoons, and nutria stacked like cordwood on the bow of Pappy's (My Great-grandfather) homemade juniper skiff or that of watching a "rat" dragging a cattail to use in construction of his lodge ( locally called a "bed"). Although Pappy was in his 70s at the time, he could still make his way around the marshes and set a trap with his visibly twisted and arthritic hands. He always made sure that I was watching how he made the set, what the set was for, and would always say, "I bet he'll be floating here tomorrow morning. This is a good slide". A muskrat run could be easily seen contrasted against the tannic water since they made a hole into the bank that accessed their beds. Pappy's stubby King Edward cigar never moved from the space in his lower teeth while he shoved the skiff through the shallow muddy creeks and along the shorelines checking for new activity and signs of rats. Occasionally, we would get out of the boat and walk along the shoreline if the ground allowed it and we didn't sink too deeply. All of his traps were piled up together in the back of the boat where he stood and I had the job of handing him the trap sticks that anchored each set. He would ask if I knew what each track was and if it was old or new. He especially liked the piles of rat pellets on tussocks where he could place a jumper trap (his favorite). Sometimes he took his shotgun in case we surprised a sage-peter or a wood duck.

Once we ran the traps, Pappy took me back home. My face was red and burning from the wind and cold, my hands were sore from helping to drag that day's catch back to the truck. Dad would ask if we caught anything, how many black rats, how many browns, and if they were all large grade and made sure that I told him what Pappy had told me during that trip. Although I was only 5 or so, I tried my best to recount the morning to him. The slight smile and nod was reassurance that Pappy's tutelage hadn't changed from the time that Dad was my age doing the exact same thing. He would periodically tell the story about Pappy getting both thumbs caught in the new style conibear trap and cussing the thing for all that it was worth because there was no one around to help him get loose.

Pappy didn't trap much longer after that mainly due to his age and the fact that the animal rights movement and the grain embargo had just taken off. The grain embargo included fur trading with Russia and other eastern block countries and for all intents and purposes terminated all profitable trapping. I then spent some of my time with Dad learning how to catch foxes along the edges of fields using dirt-hole sets which required quite a bit of skill. Fur prices started to drop drastically and it was not financially worthwhile to maintain a trap line. Muskrats, at one point, were nine dollars each and within 5 years had declined to only one dollar, with no one willing to even buy them. This caused some serious issues in our area that were unnoticed at the time. During the same period that fur prices had fallen, the health of Back Bay was under a watchful eye because it appeared to be dying. Dad then became part of, and helped found, a grassroots organization to fight this decline and become stewards of the bay, known now as the Back Bay Restoration Foundation. The water clarity, the aquatic grasses, the waterfowl, the fish, and native marsh grasses were all disappearing. And the lack of trappers who were instrumental in controlling predators like foxes and raccoons led immediately to the disappearance of quail, rabbits, and song birds.

It wasn't long before the BBRF and others could identify the key indicators of the Bay's illness and the issues it caused. The few trappers that were still active were not catching any muskrats, the otters were all but gone, the water never seemed to be clear, and the only animals that were still available were furbearers like foxes and raccoon that you could only catch in the agricultural farmlands and woods surrounding the bay. The marsh and shoreline seemed to have given its notice that it was not feeling well. The aquatic mammals recognized it, too. An introduced menace called the nutria (large rat-like furbearer resembling a beaver) was about all that could be found in any numbers. Not only did the nutria eat up the main natural foods of the muskrat, but it also destroyed shoreline banks, dug holes through levies, and cut large ditches through the delicate wetlands causing the hydrology of the marsh to change. I can remember hearing nutria on quiet nights making sounds like a feeding cow as they went through the marsh eating everything in their path. You walk along the shoreline and see piles of what looked like Long John Silvers' hushpuppies floating everywhere (but they weren't hushpuppies). By the mid 80s, there were no muskrat beds (lodges) in the area. Aside from a very small population in secluded farm ponds, they were gone. We thought that this was due to the nutria being larger and essentially running them out. It wasn't until later that we found out why.

Around 2005, noticeable signs of recovery were being seen throughout the bay and the watershed. Waterfowl, fish, and other wildlife were showing up in historic numbers. Cattails, needle rush and native marsh grasses were re-appearing in areas where the Fish and Wildlife Service had tried to eradicate the phragmites reed. The water quality and clarity had recovered enough to facilitate mass growth of SAV (submerged aquatic vegetation) which serve as food and shelter for waterfowl, fish, and some mammals. The bay was starting to become strangely familiar to me again, and I was seeing those old muskrats drag cattails across the creeks in the late evenings. I was noticing the rat beds protruding above the bulrushes in the marsh where they had not been for 20 years, and I could see the milky contrast of their underwater runs against the clean, tannic creek water. You see, the muskrats were the key. They will only live in an environment that is healthy and sustainable. When they left, we should have seen that indicator and done something then. That's why I LOVE muskrats, and not because of the corny song from the 70s.