On days when I am trying to get photos of the beavers at my local marshland park, I sometimes see muskrats (Ondatra zibethicus) swimming in the beaver pond. The muskrats seem to be swimming from the direction of the beaver lodge so often that I wonder if they are sharing the lodge with the beavers.
Today, there was a thin layer of ice on the beaver pond, but the muskrats had created an open-water channel that they seemed to be using to get to the cattails, one of the foods they eat. Frequently the muskrats will dive and swim away when they become aware of my presence.
Today, however, I was able to get a couple of shots of what I think is one of the muskrats partially out of the water on the ice. It was getting close to sunset and the animal was some distance away, so my photos ended up a a bit grainy and soft. The more I look at the photos, the more I am conflicted about whether this is a large muskrat or a small beaver. Since I haven’t seen a muskrat out of water, I am not sure about its body shape.
Whatever he is, I especially like the pose of the animal in the first image. In the second shot, he almost looks like he is praying—it was a Sunday, after all.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
It’s fairly impressive that you get them posing so well that they are praying on Sunday!
Probably praying for an early spring!
We had a muskrat down at our duck pond a few years ago. He was hard to spot, usually diving into the pond at the first sign of humans, so we only caught a few glimpses of brown fur and rat tail.