Muskrat

Eiseley's Muskrat

My name is Loren Eiseley. I am a naturalist – someone who “studies” nature, foolish as that may be. Not so foolish, nowadays with all our talk of the environment.

There is a lake in New England which used to be a quiet place when I was a boy. You never heard noises there. Even sounds were rare: bird calls and the lapping of waves in the wind. Country homes have been built now, and summertime play on the lake has taken over. Motorboats rattle their smoky engines and carry to and fro the laughter and the shouting of scores of teenagers. If I had felt like going in for a swim this day, as I once did, I might well have been chopped to pieces, so I just sat in the shallows under a boat dock and reflected.

Suddenly in a patch of sun-lit water I saw a dark shadow pass swiftly over the lake bottom. Life! After awhile the shadow came closer and presented itself. I saw a furry nose with whiskers above the surface of the water, green plants trailing from a mouth. It was a Muskrat. Undaunted by the inroads of civilization, it had continued to live in the paradise of its natural habitat.

Coming almost to my feet, Muskrat munched his slimy breakfast and looked my way in friendship. He didn't seem to know much about the killing instincts of human beings. Little did he know that there are people who like to shoot anything that moves. Muskrat asked little from life: a strip of shore to run on, sunlight and darkness, green plants.

Now he was caught between a deep lake with chopping blades and a forest slowly losing itself to timber. I whispered to Muskrat, “Run along; you'd better go now. You are in the wrong universe and do not know my power. I can throw stones.” And at his feet I just dropped a little pebble. His eyes, much better under water than on land, looked at me near-sightedly. For a moment it seemed he might take the pebble between his paws. Then, somehow sensing that all might not be well, he slid into the water, his nose twitching.

Muskrat lived in a shrinking universe, squeezed between the buzz-saw of the boats and the dark wall of hills beyond the bank. In the water weeds he cowered, waiting for me to disappear. I got up and walked away from the dock, vaguely thankful that I had done no harm. There was but one thought in my mind: What do we mean by “the natural world?” Is there anything we can call a natural world at all?

From The Star Thrower, by Loren Eiseley
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1979