What is this strange animal?

Geeky Swedes Ballard

My Ballard reader “Old Lady” emailed us this photo and asks, “What is this?”

She explains: “This guy showed up on our deck tonight on Seaview Ave. At first I thought it was a big rat and then thought it might be a nutria, but when I checked out information on nutria, it sounds like they are a lot bigger and have tails. This didn’t have a tail and was about the size of a guinea pig, say 10” long and about 3-4 lbs. It didn’t have any fear of us at all. I had to prod it gently with a barbecue fork to get it away from my pea vines.”

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53 thoughts to “What is this strange animal?”

  1. That is a mountain beaver. Common in the Pacific Northwest; marked presence in Discovery Park. (Though you won't see them from the trail.)

  4. Not a nutria – no big orange teeth, and too small. from the looks of the claws/feet it looks like some kind of mole, burrowing animal…

  7. Mountain Beaver. They love to eat rhody blossoms. I thought people were stealing my flowers because the teeth of these little varmints make it look like someone “cuts” the plant. I discovered one eating one day. You can call animal control and the will bring you a trap to catch and them have him/her relocated.

  8. looks like a mountain beaver, aplodontia, the world's most primitive rodent. they're native to the northwest, and have fur as soft as chinchillas. sweet and harmless, unless you're a young cedar tree, then it will want to live in your root system.

  9. My dog and I have spotted some sort of creature at the peripheral of our path during our early morning walks. We've only seen this creature a few times. I've tried to describe it to my wife, who thought maybe this animal is what we saw but our creature was substantially larger. Who knows, maybe we saw the mama!

  10. Thank you! I knew I had mountain beavers in my yard because I could see their burrows but had never seen one. Thanks for the pictures and the info.

  11. An interesting tidbit about mountain beavers —

    “Although the largest flea (Hystrichopsylla schefferi) in the world—it is up to ¼ inch long—is found on mountain beavers and in their burrows, it does not bother humans.”

  12. Yeppers – Mountain Beavers do not see well and have little fear of humans. Live trap him and put him in an area that has water and foliage and you won't see him again. I speak from my own experience with one of the little fellows

  17. That is a guinea pig that a pet owner probably dumped. As a former rescue owner I saw it all the time. Some child got “bored” of his new pet and the parent wouldn't take responsibility and let it loose in a park. They usually do not survive well in the wild, as they've been domesticated since the Incas.

  18. mah boyfrin breeds guinneys and sells em to chilrins who need pets- one musta scaped and ben lookin for supper. theys is trained to answer to a fat lady whistlin, reel em in that way. boyfrin can come swoop it up once the lil rascal is trapped.

  19. Looks like a mountain beaver, great article about them in the Pacific Northwest section of the Sunday Seattle Times(Feb 8, 2009). I have seen one in Golden Gardens park, unafraid of me and loved water. He was on the side of a hill enjoying the flowing water eating plants. Looked like a friendly harmless cute critter.

  21. Yes, that looks like a mountain to me as well, although I'm still recovering from laughter at “Combat Wombat” – he's even doing the commando crawl!!!

  22. oops, apparently I made a mountain out of a mole-like creature. I meant “mountain beaver”. I guess I shouldn't laugh and type.

  27. I saw a family of possums running ages ago. It was a dusk till dawn kind of moment, early am, the dog scared them out of trash, and they all took off with their waddling butts, and bald tails scurring to someother hiding place before the dawn settled in.

  28. I thought my dog killed a possum in our backyard in the half second before I could pull her away, but it turned out the possum was just “playing possum”. I was convinced it was dead until I came back outside to find it gone.

  32. Looks a lot like a guinea pig, but I think the toes are wrong. Hard to tell from this picture. It also appears to have longer whiskers than you usually see on GP's.

  42. They are cute, but they are DESTRUCTIVE. They routinely destabilize the side of a ravine near our house, and it has to be shored up periodically. Not good for our foundations. Powerful little critters.

  46. Just ran into one last night at midnite as I was watering my planting beds!!
    Face to face with it,….my first sighting in 20 years here in Magnolia. He met my hose!!

  47. It's very likely a Mountain Beaver: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_beaver

    We have them in the Seattle area, and they are actually quite a nuisance. They dig holes in the ground which they often pad with plant matter (including seeds) for invasive plant species. In addition, the holes can become an ankle-twisting danger for people. They also have poor eyesight, so you can usually get quite close to them.

  51. Here is how I catch them. Get a metal trap suitable to catch small live animals. Since mountain beavers don't like to touch metal, you need to sift your trap into the ground by moving back and forth making a nice sandy floor inside the trap. Next, cover the trap release mechanism with leaves. The food to use is sliced apples, leading them out of the hole and into the trap over the release mechanism.

    Mountain beavers are very destructive and have eaten my rhoddies, azaleas, ferns and hostas to the ground. It took me 20 years to completely eliminate them.

    Good luck – now I am tackling the racoons.

  52. Yep – that's a mountian beaver and I have been fighting the little critters for 20 years. One day 20 years ago I planted several nice 6 foot rhoddies on my hillside behind my house. One day I woke up to admire my work and noticed a rhoddy missing from the top of the hill. All branches were trimmed to the ground and leading into a nearby hole in the hillside.

    And so began “beaverquest 1990 to 2010”. Here is what I learned over the years to trap them. First, they don't like to touch metal, so you need to sift your metal small animal trap into the ground. Next, line the trap with some vegetation, I usually use rhoddy leaves that they just got through trimming.

    Lead small slices of apple out of the beavers hole leading into your trap and make sure the apple pieces go to the end of the trap so they can trip it.

    Right now, as I write this message, I have a new beaver who is quite smart. This one keeps eating the apple slices and not setting the trap off. I have even set the trap hair trigger, but no luck yet.

    These little suckers are quite destructive. They will eat rhoddies, azaleas, ferns, and hostas. My wife watched one a few years back each a large evergreen fern to the ground and hawl it off in less than an hour.

  53. I was assuming that it was that rats had gotten into our compost bin, but these guys have no tails and their substantial tunnels seems to run virtually everywhere in our yard, and beneath our six garden beds. I was blaming moles for eating our entire garden (from the roots) last season. Now I’m guessing it’s been moles all along. This past year we got zero zuchinnis, 2 cucumbers, zero pumpkins, and our entire beet crop was eaten. Usually our garden has been prolific, but I’m guessing they are eating the roots, and keeping our vine vegetables too tiny to produce. Anyone else have trouble with mt beavers in their garden and compost. Can I be sure they are not rats? They have no tails, and I cannpt find any species of rat in Seattle without a tail.

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