I recently got back from a trip to North Carolina, and I saw a small mammal swimming in a lake in Asheville. It was no longer than a foot or 30 cm, and was swimming paralell to the banks of the lake. It was out at dusk - about 8:30 PM. I don’t have a picture, but I’m wondering if anyone can help me figure out what it might have been.
It wasn’t a beaver - too small, no big tail.
It also wasn’t a river otter - again too small, and river otters usually show their tails as they arch their back to dive.
It also wasn’t a snake or turtle - no shell, and the way it moved was mammal-like.
I know a lot of rodents swim to cross water barriers - but swimming paralell to the shore seemed out of character for a lot of them to me.
I agree. A muskrat, which is much smaller than a beaver, sounds by far the most likely candidate. A foot long for the head+body would be about right. They are very common throughout much of North America.
We do have muskrat throughout North Carolina – it’s the most likely answer.
Prior to some land redevelopment and culverting here, the drainage ditch separating my landlady’s property (including where my home sits) from her neighbors was the headwaters of a regional stream of significant length – it flows into the Little River shortly before it joins the Neuse nearly 20 miles south of us. We had muskrats there on a regular basis, and on one occasion we believe we spotted an otter (rare but not totally extinct around here) in that stream, walking back through the woods along it.
Could have been a Nutria - I thought they were bigger, but maybe a small/young one.
Do they and the muskrats swim not just to get across bodies of water, but in them? I might not have noticed it much if it weren’t for the fact that it paralleled the shore rather than trying to get to dry land.
Nutria is possible, but is usually much bigger than a muskrat, almost the size of a beaver. Mink is also possible, but they are substantially less common than muskrats.
Without a detailed description it might be impossible to tell for sure, but on the basis of the described size and behavior and because of its commoness muskrat is the most likely candidate.
Robert McKee might have killed the Swamp Ape, but the Swamp Attack Bunny is alive and well, despite appearing to be drawn straight from a Monty Python skit.
Muskrat seems the likely answer. Earlier this spring, my gf and I got a good look at what we both thought was a mink. So we began investigating, “what looks like a mink in western Pennsylvania”. We found out that mink are making a comeback in our area, and in this case what looks like a mink, was indeed a mink.
A mink and her kittens live in a den in the creek in our front yard in Tennessee. The mother mink hunts each morning and is frighteningly good at making a kill. I have seen her with chipmunks, carp, bluegill, crayfish, birds, and snakes. She and the kits get the rips now and then and bounce around the yard like drunken otters- really really cute from something really vicious.
