Nortel woods area. This little guy was running down the side of one of the roads at the Nortel campus. I was worried that he was going to get hit, so I stopped, grabbed my camera for a few shots, and tried to herd him up the bank. Initially, he turned to run back the way he had come, but then as I got closer, he hopped towards me, almost like a kangaroo, and attacked my boot! Not very viciously and not very hard, but clearly trying to scare me off. I had to admire his guts. I am many times bigger than he (he was the size of a young kitten). When that didn't work, he turned around and ran back the way he'd been going at first. A car came along and I told him this was not going to work, he couldn't stay on the road. He must have read my mind, because he turned and scrambled up the snowy bank and near the top he dove into the snow and vanished. There is a pond on the other side so I hope he was able to get there safely and find some way under the water, for it was all frozen. By rights, he should have been safely in his own little muskrat house.

I was intrigued by the large size of his hind feet, not having noted this so clearly before. I could also see his partially webbed feet, an adaptation to his semi-aquatic lifestyle. A beautiful little guy, perfectly adapted for his own environment, but not for that of roads and cars.