Porcupine with mange?
Was it nibblin’ on bacon, chewin’ on cheese? 
I thought muskrat at first.
Badger? If so, you can. not. pet. it!
Was there a snake nearby?
Wasn’t a wolverine (far scarier than an escaped capybara!) or badger, and was way too big to be a muskrat. It may have been a porcupine with mange.
Go to my link above and look at the picture of a Wolverine. Article says they can run up to 70 pounds.
Swats Muffin with rolled-up newspaper
Possum?
If possums get to be dog-sized in Minnesota, I’m never going there. They’re nasty buggers here, and they weigh 5-7 pounds at most.
Ask and ye shall receive.
By the way, the description of a “porcupine with mange” sounds amazingly like a possum.
I did an image search for big beavers in Minneapolis. Do you want me to post some of the pictures I found?
Maybe they will help you identify what saw, but then again, maybe NOT!
OMG. What has to go wrong in your childhood for you to grow up and decide to put blue googley-boppers on the head of a giant rodent??
Wolverine could fit but she saw it move quite a bit. Wolverines move like bears, and she would probably have thought “bear cub” if that were the case. Beaver fits best IMO. The Capybara has a much thicker snout though. Can you elaborate on the snout shape at all? Or is the horror beginning to fade?
Seriously, I’d be so freaked out if I saw that capybara in real life. ::shudder:: I saw a Norwegian Rat the size of a large house cat once, and the shock has not entirely left me.
Why is it so hard to find animal photos with some frame of reference in them? Most of the ones I’ve found could have been anywhere from 5 to 80 pounds for all you can tell in the photo.
Glad you got past safely, MOL!
I’ve only seen wolverines in zoos, but I can’t imagine mistaking one for a capybara or beaver: the critter’s whole body screams “nasty predator that’s going to eat me.” They really do seem like bears in a way that still photos can’t capture. Plus, they’re really rare (beavers are common), and don’t tend to hang out near populated areas. But the size is certainly right.
It was not a wolverine.
They almost certainly will!
I just remember that the face was longish, and the snout kind of turned down. It didn’t have the weird barrel of a capybara (does anything?), but its snout was more barrelish than that of a raccoon (more cone-shaped), which at the time I was thinking it was.
While you were out wandering around, you didn’t happen to see my wombat. did you?
They’re a road hazard after dark in some places around here (though not much of one, since they are on back roads where you’re not going very fast.) In Venezuela, I’ve seen whole herds of them.
I’d rather have to deal with them than deer.
Right on. To hunt them you just walk among them and club them. They don’t even flinch seeing their neighbors being clubbed. Hardly something to be scared of.
See, you don’t understand, my fear is not based in reason.
Anyway, I think the mystery is solved; I am almost certain that it was an extremely large beaver. It fits the description of my general memory, amid several other factors that make it seem as if that was what I saw. For bonus material, when I told my friend that I saw a huge-as-shit rodent by the river, she commented on seeing scarily large beavers which are cool, in her words, “until they attack you.” Heh, are beavers even ill-tempered? The wikipedia “Behavior” section told me very little.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, this thread can die, or we can commence the beaver jokes.
A large beaver, or a small Pi Beta Phi crawling her way back to the frat house. If there is a difference, that is.
Beavers were killed to be turned into hats.
Back in those days, “hat” was slang for a woman’s privates. Why? Because like hats, they were often felt.
Now Beaver is slang for the same thing.
Coincidence? I think not. 