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Conservation Commission

Conservation and More

              by Bruce B. Beckley

Issue #73, November, 1999
Mushquash

No Batteries

The covenant we have with nature to be stewards of the natural world was the topic of our previous article. Another focus of stewardship is that of the mind. It provides a foundation of knowledge out of which the love we show nature can grow. Books don’t require batteries, at least ones like "Make Way For Ducklings" or the Thornton Burgess Mother West Wind stories. Stories such as these open young minds and curiosities to the non-electronic, natural environment. We suggest having natural history books, fiction or non, around the house. Interest in nature spawned early will be rewarding for a lifetime.

Now a days, there are guides to everything. Dinosaurs aside, I still start with Peterson Field Guides which hi-light species' distinguishing features. Beyond Peterson, the Stokes Field Guide To Birds combines good photographs with abundant data. When it comes to wildflowers, Newcomb's Wildflower Guide with illustrations by Gordon Morrison is unsurpassed. (This Spring Peabody Mill will offer a course in wildflower identification based on the key in Larry's book.) An unusual book Tracking And The Art Of Seeing by Paul Rezendes is a wealth of pictures of native mammals and their signs. With these volumes you will be able to identify the species in your backyard. As you build a home library, add books like Roadside Geology of Vermont and New Hampshire and Wetlands also by Rezendes.

Don't forget yourself. While Santa is shopping for loved ones, find yourself a new natural history guide such as Eastern Forests, a Peterson Field Guide, or a coffee table book such as one by David Meunch or Robert Bateman. Be a mind steward in your home.

"The last word in ignorance is the person who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?' If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not." Aldo Leopold, 1887-1948

Mushquash

It's usually a lost cause to challenge Jan on a natural history topic. She knows the environment and the species that inhabit it. But I was sure I was right this time. (Of course, you wouldn't be reading this if I weren't.)

The question - do muskrats eat mussels? I said "yes". At least those on the banks of the Housatonic in Connecticut did. (Down there beside the Indian reservation they're called mushrats.) Jan said they are herbivores with a set of teeth for cutting water plants, not for preparing mussels on the half shell. Nothing to do but to go to the bookshelf. Paul Rezendes says, "Although muskrats are primarily herbivores, feeding on cattails, bulrushes, sedges, arrowheads and other aquatic plants, they also eat clams, mussels, snails, crustaceans, fish and sometimes young birds. A pile of empty mussel shells could indicate muskrat activity."

Helenette Silver in her definitive work, "History of New Hampshire Game and Furbearers," draws from many sources including Wood (1637) and Josselyn (1674), among the earliest writers of New England's natural history. Wood wrote: Mushquashes be much like Beaver for shape but nothing near as bigge; the Male has two stones which smell as sweet as Muske and being killed in Winter, never loose their sweet smell: These skinnes are no bigger than a Coney-skinne, yet sold for five shillings a piece, being sent for Tokens into England. One good skinne will perfume a whole house-full of cloathes, if it be right and good.

And from Josselyn: "(They) live in shallow ponds where they build them houses of earth and sticks in shape of mole-hills: In May they scent very strong of Muske; their fur is no great esteem; their stones wrapt up in Cotton-wool will continue a long time, and are good to lay amongst cloths to give them a grateful smell."

And I'm grateful our sense of scents has changed.

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