Muskrats.  Muskrats?  Muskrats!  Do you want to know something about muskrats?  You've come to the right place!  Hundreds of links to muskrat-related pages are given in the categories above.  Click on one and explore the world of muskrat on the web.

Here is a brief description of each category:

Biology - What they eat, where they live, what they do, etc.

Books, Stories, etc. - Fiction and nonfiction works about muskrat and where to find them

Clubs - Mickey Mouse has a club; so do muskrats

Control/Conservation - How to humanely get rid of them or help them along

Humor - Muskrat jokes

Legal - Laws pertaining to muskrat

Music - Songs and tunes and where to find them

Pictures - Still and moving pictures and drawings

Place Names - Cities, towns, bodies of water, etc., named Muskrat

Products - Information about muskrat fur and things made from muskrat fur or musk essences.

Recipes - How to cook them or where you might find some ready-to-eat muskrat

Search - Tips and hints for searching specific Internet sites for muskrat and a form for searching the "Everything Muskrat" site

Trapping/Hunting - How and when to catch them; pelt prices and services; historical descriptions of muskrat hunting and trapping; also muskrat knives, traps, and bait.

Other - Anything that didn't fit in another category; includes other sites with lists of muskrat-related sites and "muskrat" translated into other languages

[Although not strictly required, to properly view these pages, your browser must allow the running of JavaScripts.  I test these pages with Microsoft Explorer 6.0.  If you have trouble with any of them, please let me know.]

Without following all those links, what is a muskrat?
Here is a dictionary-type definition of "muskrat":

musk•rat (musk' rat) n., pl. -rats or -rat [< Algonquian musquash] 1. An aquatic rodent of North America (Ondatra zibethica), having dark, glossy brown fur, a flattened tail, webbed hind feet, and a musky odor; also called water rat. 2. The valuable fur of this rodent.

Note:  The Probert E-Text Encyclopaedia makes a distinction between the hyphenated word musk-rat  (or musquash) as Fiber zibethicus and the unhyphenated muskrat as Ondatra zibethicus.  However, Websters Unabridged Dictionary 1913 equates musquash and muskrat.  So, (1) there is very little difference in pronunciation between "muskrat" and "musk-rat", and (2) "musquash" may refer to either animal.  This casual use of common names may result in references to both Ondatra zibethicus and Fiber zibethicus among my links.

Why do you give more than one link for each entry in a category?
People who maintain web sites often rearrange them. Usually this is a good thing, but the result is that links may now point to pages that no longer exist.  For this reason, I try to give the home page corresponding to my link--if the link becomes "broken", you can try to find it from the home page.  Larger sites (especially commercial sites) have a feature that allows you to search their sites.  This is very useful.

How do you decide if a web page qualifies to appear on your site?
Usually it has to be primarily about some aspect of muskrat or have a major section devoted to muskrat.  Sometimes a category doesn't really lend itself to that.  For example, in the Music section, many of the sites are just lists of all the records the site owner has--they did not focus on muskrats at all.  So it really just comes down to what I think will interest you in your muskrat web quest.

Can I send you information on other web pages about muskrats?
Yes!  That's what these pages are about.  My e-mail address appears at the bottom of each page expressly so you can send me url's of other pages of interest to those looking up muskrat on the web.

I do not rate or give other subjective comments about other sites--I just try to tell a little about them and allow you to explore them.  If my comments are misleading, let me know.

I am not interested in web sites that just use "muskrat" in the title because it's cute.  I want to present web sites that give information about muskrats.  Also, I am not interested in receiving a bunch of information you collected or wrote--put it up on a web page (it's really very easy) and just send me the url.  Thanks.

Why did you build a muskrat web site?
Because there wasn't one before.  I looked up "muskrat" on the Internet and did not find any comprehensive site to guide me in my search.  If there weren't already hippopotamus web sites (see Hippo World), this would be "Everything Hippopotamus" instead.

Why were you looking up muskrat on the Internet?
One of our dogs was nicknamed "Muskrat" by my son, but he and I didn't know much about muskrats at that time.  By the way, our dog isn't a whole lot like a muskrat--his coat's too light, his tail's not flat, his feet aren't webbed ... although his odor sometimes is musky. 

I thank the maintainers of the above sites for mentioning my site.

Also, thanks to Marge_Talt for mentioning "Everything Muskrat" in Wildlife and Gardens - Part 7 - Discussion - Suite101.com.

You are visitor  .  Thanks to all of you out there on the web for stopping by.  The response to this site is quite astounding to me.  As of 2000-May-06, it has averaged 20.4 hits per day since 1998-Feb-20.