Meet Mr. Muskrat

Friday afternoon, Sawyer was outside playing, and I was inside with Monroe.  He started barking and wouldn't stop.  After about ten minutes, I went to investigate.  I tried calling him inside, but he wouldn't come.  He was barking at the flowers behind our air conditioner.  I figured it was a snake or bunny, so I went to grab Sawyer.  When I got closer, the flowers were moving, and I realized whatever it was was lunging back at him.  This was no snake or rabbit.  I had to put Monroe back inside, but then I had no idea what to do.  I called Zach, but his phone was dead.  Just then, I saw my neighbor, Jana, come out of her house, so I yelled to see if her husband Eric was home.  (He is the type that would love to come over and catch the animal.)  He wasn't home, but he was on his way.  In the meantime, she and I tried to get a good look at the animal.  It was the size of a large rabbit with a pointy nose.  When Eric got home, he came over with a shovel and bucket.  When he tried to push the animal into the bucket, it started fighting with the rake.  Thankfully, he got it in on the next try.  Once he had it in the bucket, though, we didn't have a plan.  We covered the bucket with the cover to our firepit.  The animal was trying to jump out and gnawing at the wire.  Then Eric told me to call the Humane Society.  At first, the lady on the phone told me to double bag it and throw it in the trash.  I asked if we were supposed to kill it.  She said, "It's alive?  No, don't kill it. I'll send an officer over."  While we waited for the officer we tried to figure out what the animal was.  It looked like a beaver with a rat's tail.  We also looked at the place where we'd found it.  There was a bed of fur and grass behind the air conditioner, so we think that it'd been there a while. During this time, Emily, Zach and Ben had come over/home.  Each one was surprised by our discovery.  When the officer finally got here, he transferred him to a cage, and I took pictures.  It was an eventful Friday afternoon.

Our make-shift cage

It's playing dead.