Muskrat encounter

[270SLX]

At the risk of starting another "weirdest thing to happen to you on your boat" thread, I gotta tell you guys about my muskrat encounter last Sunday . . . .

I blew up my "water hammock", you know what I mean - one of those floats that fold up for storage - and got in the water for some relaxation. I let myself float, closed my eyes and tried to guess where' I'd end up. This was in an old sand quarry North of the Quad Cities. (Not out in the channel of the Mississippi!!)

Anyway, I'm getting pretty relaxed and about to fall asleep when I feel my rear end dragging bottom 3 feet from shore. I open one eye to see a muskrat at the shore about six feet from me. He's looking at me and I'm looking at him but he just keeps chewing on a blade of sweet grass. I keep floating and by the time I come to rest I'm less than 3 feet from him. I can plainly hear him chewing. This goes on for about 15 minutes as he goes up the bank, gets more grass, and brings it back to the shore to wash it as he eats. Finally a bass angler disturbs the rodent and I and I swim back to the boat to tell the Admiral. Of course she's aghast and tells me not to tell her friend or they'll never come out on the boat with us again.

Maybe the story isn't all that amazing but it's one of the things I like about boating. You get to see some pretty neat wildlife.

Dennis

 

[Pirate]

Your encounter had a happier ending than mine.

I started my generator and mains and then disconnected the shore power. For some reason, the cablemaster would not withdraw the power cord. I check the breaker - fine. I opened the engine hatch to find steam and smoke everywhere. I immediately shut down all engines. After some investigation, I find a large (6") hole in the exhaust off of one of my main engines. It had really strange marks around the edges. Knowing the solution, but baffled by the cause, I went back to the cablemaster problem. I found a dead muskrat in the bin. He had crawled into the exhaust, traveled up the pipe, and then fell into the water lift muffler. At that point he began crawling toward the engine and eventually chewed through the side of the pipe. After some adventures around the bilge, he found the "exit" hole of the cablemaster.... only there was this large cable in the way, so he decided to chew his way around it. Bad idea for the muskrat.

We now keep fenders in the exhaust outlets.

 

[270SLX]

Mine was "Molly the Muskrat". Yours was "Ricky the Freakin' RAT""

 

[RT 240SD]

I once went down the large tour boat I used to drive and was greated by a Marmot on board. Chased the little bugger around for quite some time before I was able to get him off the boat and down the dock. Odd as heck as they are generally a few thousand feet in elevation higher than where we were, and he went down a dock and onto a boat.

I have pics but they are all that pre digital era.