Their lodges, made mostly of cattails and other aquatic plants, may be 3 feet high and 6 feet across. Feeding stations are similar but smaller. Inside the lodge is a nest chamber accessible only from below water. Once inside the lodge, muskrats are safe from predators other than mink and occasionally snapping turtles. Moving awkwardly on land, however, they are killed by coyotes, foxes and large owls.
Floods also kill muskrats, and fluctuating water levels increase the risk of death.
L ike other voles, these are runway builders and herbivores, eating mostly grasses, cattails, bulrushes and other marsh plants. They occasionally damage cornfields on flood plains, and their burrowing sometimes weakens ditch banks and levees. The newborn young are blind, naked and vole-like, with round tails. Soon they acquire the muskrat's proper flattened tail, and at two weeks can swim and dive.