Writings by David A. Ek

The Waning and Wanting of Muskrat Love

by David A. Ek

From cuckoos to catbirds, prairies to pigeons, mushmelons to muskrats, it’s all a matter of emotions. Connections. Humanity. For within our increasingly fragmented society, if we cannot feel empathetic towards one another, what hope is there for us to attain muskrat love?

Famed ecologist Aldo Leopold, in his book A Sand County Almanac, waxed poetically on the passenger pigeon. He noted that while people lamented its 1914 extinction, many attempted to soften the loss with the assurance that, although extinct, the bird lives on through books, written accounts, and the faded memories passed down from one generation to the next. Leopold countered this notion by saying that a book-pigeon is a poor substitute for the real McCoy. The thunderous claps of book-pigeons’ wings do not spiral into the heavens as the covey of all coveys span from one horizon to the next. Nor do book-pigeon flights create winds that mark or define the passing of the seasons. No, Leopold asserted, passenger pigeons could never live on as book-pigeons. How could a two-dimensional world consisting of ink smudges on a page or binary code projected on a screen come even close to the full power and vitality of what was once the passenger pigeon species—community—phenomena—experience? It cannot.

Aldo Leopold was not as poetically reminiscent about the muskrat. Few are. Why? People disregard and take for granted muskrats in our modern society as much as our late nineteenth-century brethren did the passenger pigeon. Once, both species were everywhere and as commonplace as ice crystals in a pre-global warming Antarctica. However, if the passenger pigeon taught us anything, it is that we shouldn’t take things for granted. Because, like the passenger pigeon, or the loss of a dear friend, one never truly appreciates things around us until they are forever gone.

Fortunately, regarding the muskrat, we are far removed from such a cataclysmic passenger pigeon event. However, I would opine that the same Aldo Leopold premise holds: a book-muskrat, like a book-pigeon, cannot hold a candle to the real McCoy.

One distinct difference between a muskrat and a passenger pigeon is that muskrats are still around—although only a few people take the time to notice. Annie Dillard noticed. She noted with passion and emotion. Annie Dillard featured muskrats prominently in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. In her book, Dillard used muskrats and other encounters with nature along Virginia’s Tinker Creek to explore through deep symbolic and philosophical prose, the nuances of humanity, spiritual connections, and the meaning of life. I can see the usefulness of such an approach. Muskrats can easily serve as symbolic metaphors for wide-ranging elements of the human condition. If we only stopped to notice, observe, and ponder.

My most recent muskrat encounter occurred just two days ago. This was the real McCoy. It was no book-muskrat. With my senses on full alert, I stood silently along Town Run, the small stream that courses along the western shore of my Virginia homestead. Annie Dillard had her Virginia stream, and I have mine. My muskrat encounter took place within the time of the evening in which the yellow-billed cuckoos’ clacking and the gray catbird mewing transition into the barred owl’s “who-cooks-for-you” hoots. However, instead of my ears noticing the expected clack, mew, or hoot sound, the corner of my eye unexcitingly caught a motion in the water below, and off in the distance. Thinking that it may be a muskrat, I froze. I looked. I noticed.

Already in a standing position, I dared not move for cover. Pretending to be a tree, I watched as it slowly curved its way downstream directly towards me. My tree disguise must have worked because the muskrat kept coming. It stopped every few feet to munch on plants that lined the shoreline. In my closest view, the muskrat appeared small and vulnerable. If I had been a fox or a mink, the muskrat would be dead by now. If I had previously planted snap traps, the muskrat would be dead by now. Instead, we let each other live. I simply enjoyed the privilege of watching one of nature’s secretive marvels. Eventually, the muskrat swam out of view that even a wind-bent tree couldn’t peer beyond without toppling over. There, bent and motionless, I remained rooted for a long time contemplating the experience.

I hadn’t seen a muskrat in Town Run for nearly two years. However, I assumed they were more common than my paltry observations would suggest. They are secretive and shy, after all. Well, they serve as prey to—everything. Everything. While cuckoos and red-throated hummingbirds may not eat muskrats, it seems like almost every other Virginia creature that walks, flies, or slithers does, including mink, raccoon, coyote, gray fox, red fox, black bear, bobcat, river otter, northern water snake, bald eagle, red-tailed hawk, red-shouldered hawk, great horned owl, and barred owl. Oh, lest I forget, also humans—man, woman, and child.

With so many creatures preying upon them, have muskrat populations within the Town Run watershed declined? Or, have my infrequent encounters merely been the result of my inadequate observation skills or the deployment of scientifically poor inventory methodologies? Likely both, I ask and answer myself, but this is a question that is well worth pursuing. With vigor.

The most accessible online muskrat population estimates come from data that the Commonwealth of Virginia has collected and compiled since 1964—and they now post online. As I began delving into these numbers consisting of binary codes projected on the screen, I soon discovered that this data is a bit suspect for my intended use. They represented book-muskrats, not the real McCoy. This number set came from volunteer responses to a statewide survey sent to Virginia trappers annually. Nonetheless, I dove into their mushy muskrat numbers.

According to the statewide survey results, trappers collected 287,982 muskrat pelts in the 1964 to 1965 field season. That is over a quarter of a million muskrats killed in a single year, in a single state. If we applied this number to each of the 50 states, then it would total over 14 million muskrats killed each year. Surely, you may add, not every state consumes muskrats as ferociously as Virginia does, but still, over 14 million killed a year—that’s a lot of muskrats. To sustain themselves against such a high casualty rate, muskrats would need to do even more candlelit whirling, twirling, and tangoing, and even more singing, jingling, and jangling just to make up for their human-induced losses. They may never be able to attain such replacement numbers, despite heartfelt musical support from Willis Alan Ramsey, America, and Captain & Tennille songs. Clearly, for us to inflict such carnage, we must not harbor even a trace of 1970s-era muskrat love. Muskrat Suzie, Muskrat Sam, and muskrats the world over have noticed, because for them, it’s a matter of survival.

But are they surviving? I delved deeper into Virginia’s survey results. Is it sustainable for any state to trap 287,982 muskrats a year? Ten years after this 287,982 data high-water mark, the annual muskrat take within Virginia had dropped to 172,118. Ten years after that, the number of muskrats trapped in Virginia dropped to 98,312. For the 1994 to 1995 field season, trappers reported taking 21,353 muskrats. Those numbers continued to fall, and fall, and fall—faster than Trump-era climate change research funding. Trappers took only 922 muskrats in the 2022 to 2023 field season. Therefore, in a span of less than sixty years, the annual muskrat take had dropped from 287,982 to a paltry 922. That’s quite a drop. In scientific parlance, that is a super-duper abysmally cataclysmic population drop. Given these numbers, it is little wonder that I don’t often see muskrats along Town Run.

To be fair, muskrat trapping numbers are not a reliable indicator of population trends. Scientific studies (back when our society used to support science) have consistently confirmed that the most significant variable affecting the annual trapping take is the going price for muskrat pelts. Historically, when the price goes up, trappers fan out through the marshes in greater numbers and remove higher quantities of muskrat pelts. When the prices go down, trappers either stay home, or they target another animal that draws a better price. However, while pelt prices play a significant role in trapper turnout and muskrat take, there are other factors at play in our modern muskrat drama—including societal changes.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Virginia teenagers (mostly boys) living in rural areas earned their spending money by trapping muskrats. My elderly neighbors have fond memories of running their muskrat trap lines up and down Town Run’s waterways. While I never ran a trap line, I could still, nonetheless, relate. During my formative years spent in South Seattle’s suburban jungles, my friends and I earned our spending money through paper routes, mowing lawns, and collecting bottles and cans from roadside ditches. Our parents drove us to the local recycling center, where, if memory serves me, the going rate for aluminum cans was ten cents per pound.

But times have changed. For muskrats as well as teenagers. Most teenagers nowadays have more diverse means of earning money than by wading through marshes or roadside ditches. Their multiple side hustles most likely involve entrepreneurial start-ups, ride-sharing their cars, social media, or building their personal brand. Certainly not by quietly skulking in wetland muds, skinning animals, and scraping flesh off pelts to ready them for the fur market.

However, even if social media influencer-type teens and young adults wanted to mire in the muck for muskrats, there would likely not be the quantity or quality of habitat to support an annual take as high as 287,982, let alone have enough muskrats left for them to whirl, twirl, and tango—and all the other necessary muskrat functions to form families and raise the next generation of muskrat pelts. Given that, it doesn’t seem likely that the muskrat harvest levels that Virginia attained at the height of Beatlemania could be replicated in our modern society. That would surely be a book-muskrat, not the real McCoy. Since then, the Beatles have broken up, youth have changed, and something even more alarming Has occurred—our watersheds are no longer what they were in 1964, let alone what they were in Aldo Leopold’s time.

Apparently, something besides fewer teenagers plying Virginia’s waterways is amiss in our watersheds. Modern muskrat population numbers do not speak of muskrat love. They speak of muskrat indifference.

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Many cultures the world over have ancient stories that tell of a global flood that once cleansed great evil that had descended upon the land. Christianity has Noah saving both humanity and all the earth’s diverse animal species. Conversely, Ojibway’s creation story has a less human-centric and white-savior version. Their story has the animals saving everyone—including the humans. But not just any animal: the humble and often-overlooked muskrat. The meek may or may not one day inherit the earth, but according to the Ojibway, the meek saved the earth for us all—despite humanity’s inherently wicked ways, including how we have mistreated muskrats.

In the Ojibway’s version, the Great Spirit unleashed a cleansing flood on the entire land, enough to wipe away all land-based life—except for the resourceful Waynaboozhoo who had built a giant raft. He and a ragtag assortment of rescued animals survived by floating above the devastating flood. However, he and his cohorts could not remain on the raft forever. They searched and searched for dry land to start life anew. They searched to no avail. Desperate for action, Waynaboozhoo and his fellow companions took matters into their own hands, fins, and paws. If no land naturally rose above the water, they would need to create their own.

Waynaboozhoo dove deep in the water to bring up bottom sediment. He thought that if he excavated enough sediment and piled it high, the raft party would finally have enough dry land to resettle. So, one by one, the raft party dove. Each returned without having reached the bottom. The water was too deep and their lungs too weak to make such an arduous dive. The fate of the living world hung in the balance, since they were nearly at their breaking point. Eventually, diminutive Muskrat meekly volunteered to give it a try. The entire raft party laughed at him—much like the other reindeer laughed at Rudolph. “If Waynaboozhoo, Mink, and the mighty Loon could not make such a deep dive,” they taunted, “what chance do you have? You are just a muskrat. You’re meek and pitiful.”

“I can do it,” he chirped. Little Muskrat dove and kept swimming. Down, down, and down he went. His lungs were about to give out when suddenly the bottom came into sight of his small, beady eyes. He quickly scooped up a paw-full of bottom sediment and then rose as fast as he could. Meanwhile, all on the raft scanned the water’s surface looking for a sign—even Eagle with his keen eyesight. No one saw little Muskrat. Only empty water.

Eventually, Eagle caught sight of Muskrat floating dead on the water surface. As they paddled closer, they discovered his little palm still clenched a paw-full of solid earth. They prayed for the little creature and his noble sacrifice as they carefully extracted the precious cargo from his dead paw.

With a small quantity of soil in their possession, the raft party debated what to do with it, and how to begin building dry land. Turtle volunteered the back of his shell. As the raft party gingerly placed the soil on the top of Turtle’s back, a wind came upon them. Not just any wind, but a mighty wind that simultaneously came from all four sacred directions. The raft party bowed in silent tribute. There was holy magic in the winds, because once they blew upon Turtle’s back, the little pile of soil began to grow. It grew, grew, and grew. The new island grew so much it engulfed and suffocated Turtle. One more diminutive creature sacrificed for the good of everyone. Under an inspired sacred power, the island grew to immense proportions. The raft party suddenly had a new land, one cleansed from the anger, suspicion, and evilness that had permeated the old lands and the old ways. Through the noble deeds and sacrifice of the meek and once overlooked Muskrat, earth and all her inhabitants were eventually saved.

The Ojibwe believe that despite humans near constant hunting, harassment, and attempts to eradicate them off the face of the planet, the muskrat’s spirit and resourcefulness has enabled them to not only survive, but flourish.

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This vision of muskrats and faith in their survivability came long before Virginia trappers began taking 287,982 muskrats a year. Credible scientific data (the real McCoy) does not support such a rosy muskrat vision. According to a study published in 2017 in The Journal of Wildlife Management that assessed muskrat population changes from 1970 to 2012, researchers estimated that trappers throughout their thirty-seven-state study area harvested 132,057,218 muskrats within this forty-two-year study window. That equates to 3,144,219 a year. For the entire United States, the total muskrats killed for their pelts may amount to over five million a year. This is on top of the millions of muskrats that die from disease, malnutrition, habitat loss, collision with motorists, and are consumed by owls, hawks, eagles, mink, coyote, snakes, foxes, dogs, and nearly every carnivore large enough to grasp a muskrat within its jaws. That is a whopping number of muskrats. Are muskrats resourceful and resilient enough to withstand this onslaught? If not, is their grand sacrifice worth it, since society gains far less from muskrat pelts than the rebirth and cleansing of a new land? And instead of the sacrifice of one noble hero, we are talking about millions and millions of muskrats every year, year after year. Year after year.

This same study concluded that muskrat populations are dwindling at an alarming rate, especially in the Southern and Southeastern states, including Virginia. The researchers even adjusted the numbers to account for fluctuating pelt prices. The resulting numbers were jarring. Some states, such as Louisiana and Tennessee, have seen muskrat declines ranging from ninety to ninety-nine percent. The researchers estimated that muskrat populations within Virginia declined from sixty to sixty-nine percent. Again, that is a whopping number of dead muskrats.

The cause of the muskrat’s population down-spiral could be due to a myriad of reasons. Within the Town Run watershed, perhaps it was the dam that land speculators built on a tributary. Whether they obtained a permit or not, before manipulating the watershed, it doesn’t appear that the developers had conducted a robust hydrological and ecological assessment of the possible effects of a dam on Town Run—and its interconnected natural systems. Such is often the case with many local “reviews” conducted within rural districts throughout the country.

This impoundment holds back water that once fed the Town Run ecological system. Longtime residents claim that since the dam went in, Town Run rarely flows with the volume that it once had. This observation makes hydrological and ecological sense. Impounded water reduces the flow to the downstream channel. A lake’s enlarged surface area dramatically increases evaporation and water loss. These effects reduced Town Run to a trickle. The smaller stream could no longer support the same quantity of wetlands and shoreline vegetation. With fewer riparian plants, Town Run could no longer support the same population of muskrats. Also, the smaller stream could no longer support larger fish. Otters could no longer sustain themselves on only smaller fish. While otters and muskrats were once prolific along Town Run, my old-time neighbor recalls not seeing any otters in Town Run for at least a couple of decades.

Perhaps the human-driven warming climate is also taking its toll on muskrat populations. The culprit is likely not one single smoking gun, but rather a whole series of cascading events that have developed into the perfect storm. Whatever the reason, it is apparent that something is off-kilter in our watersheds, including Town Run. It doesn’t help that, collectively, we humans tend to be short-term thinkers. It also doesn’t help when our thinking is highly skewed towards the present and focused on our own personal needs and desires. We frequently act impulsively without a plan.

We didn’t plan to drive the passenger pigeon to extinction. However, it happened. We didn’t plan on decimating muskrat populations. But it happened. We didn’t plan on dismantling the environmental protections that previous generations spent their entire lives establishing, but it is happening now at an alarming rate. We didn’t plan on burdening our children with a national debt of 40 trillion dollars. But it happened. We didn’t plan on Congressional dysfunction. But it happened. A lot of unintended consequences happened on our watch—things that we may have been able to anticipate and defend. But we didn’t. And we still don’t. To put it bluntly, that is the nature of our modern reactionary, short-term, and individually minded thinking.

For the plans that we do have, especially related to the environment, we should have learned by now that we rarely intended to follow through. Or intended to hold guilty parties accountable if we didn’t. We formalized water rights and water-use restrictions but look the other way when powerful parties glaringly exceed their limits. We grant Native American tribes mineral rights but openly flaunt them when economically it suits non-Native American economic interests. We designate protected lands, but like candy to kids on Halloween, we hand out waivers and exceptions to industries that wish to exploit these very same lands. We establish rural protection zones to keep green spaces open and rural, but we at the same time pave them over and load them with monstrous data centers. Time after time, we create environmental protections, but we lack the political will to enforce them. For all practical purposes, they became merely book-protections. Certainly not the real McCoy.

Nature does not respond well when we do not love mushmelons and muskrats, or take environmental protection seriously, or sustain a just build-it-and-see-what-happens approach to managing our natural systems. In the Federalist Papers, Founding Father James Madison succinctly summed up this all-too-human characteristic: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” While no one wants to be regulated, we need them to keep our society civil. We need oversight. While we may chafe at the sight of a cop tailing us as we cruise down the road, instinctively we recognize that society needs proactive patrols. Because, if done right, they save lives and maintain order. This same dichotomy exists for regulations. Regulations are society’s means of looking after the common person, the powerless, and the disenfranchised so that we may all have a level playing field. It doesn’t always work, but that’s the idea. It surely beats the alternatives.

An unchecked muskrat harvest leads to overharvest and population crashes. An unchecked banking system leads to financial collapse. An unchecked police force leads to abuse and corruption. Unchecked capitalism leads to widespread tribalism. Unchecked industries lead to worker deaths, poverty, and suffering, as well as degraded habitat and a changed climate. Unchecked land use practices lead to overgrazing and overharvesting, which in turn lead to depleted soils, droughts, and the Dust Bowl. An unchecked administration leads to an imperial presidency. Unchecked political parties leads to the very situation in which we are suffering through right now in the present. Big corporations, the rich and powerful, and the well-connected have the power and influence to look after their own interests. But the average Joe, Jane, José, Jasmine, and Jamal may not. This is where good government and good regulations step in.

However, in life—in all forms, from humans to cuckoos to muskrats, it’s the slow incremental change that gets us. Takes us. And defines our humanity. Like that look we get from the drooping, balding, paunch-bellied stranger that increasingly stares at us on dreary Monday mornings. It’s the slow incremental stuff that we all have in common. That is our true enemy.

Perhaps Annie Dillard was right. We can learn a lot about humanity by watching and observing muskrats—or metaphorical muskrats. However, not just those that reside along Tinker Creek and Town Run, but also throughout every uptown, downtown, backyard, sideyard, neighborhood, and all the other myriad waterways that lace through our ever-connected but slowly disconnecting and evaporating lives.

We shouldn’t need a great flood to cleanse ourselves of our wicked ways? But if so, would there be enough muskrats left to save us from ourselves? Or do we laugh and kick muskrats off our raft and disregard their sacrifice? From cuckoos to catbirds, prairies to pigeons, muskrats to our ever-fragmenting sense of humanity, it all comes down to connections. For if we cannot feel empathetic towards one another, what hope is there for us to ever attain muskrat love?

— The End —

© Copyright 2026 David Alan Ek. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This story is nonfiction. It reflects the author’s present recollections of experiences over time.

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Through TAR, we travel and experience the diverse Americana landscape. Our last post took us to a place, and state of mind, where prejudice and social dysfunction murdered a once thriving Midwestern city. In the meantime, please check out my website’s Portfolio page for a description of my compelling novels, Pedro’s Pickles and the American Dream, Lizard People: Death Valley Underground, and Bisbee and the Haunted (Psycho-Mystery 27 on Acid); and my relatable literary nonfiction book Nowhere Bound—A Spud’s Reflections on Climbing, Caving, and Other Useless Toils. I encourage you to like or follow my Facebook and Goodreads “Author’s Pages.” Until then, take care and I look forward to our next glimpse into Americana on our next TAR adventure. See you then.