Family Muskrat Adventure Year 2

We set off for our lake  line’ cabin to go muskrat trapping. We packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. The kids are riding with Tyler in the dogsled and I’m pulling the gear over with the snowmachine. I follow because the machine is much slower going on our narrow trails than the dogteam and it’s best to let the dogs set their own pace. After a 3-week long coldsnap, the weather has warmed up and it’s now light until 5:30-6. The kids were really excited to start an adventure – our great muskrat trapping field trip 2024. The trip over went pretty fast and we caught two marten, an ermine and a wolverine. For dinner I made spanish rice, moose burger and beans. We melted and melted snow to make water for the night, What a pain. The cabin floor is filthy and we made the kids stay up on the big bed platform where they prefer to play anyway.

2-11-24

Woke up feeling hungover from the unfamiliar sleeping arrangements. Not too restful. Blaze nearly pushed me off the bed all night trying to stay cuddled up close. We had coffee and oatmeal, then I made peanut butter sandwiches for lunch while Tyler got muskrat trapping gear ready. We pulled the Siglund sled behind the machine for our gear and towed the dogsled behind that for me and the kids to ride down a portage trail to a smaller lake that had a good number of pushups. I started the day by giving Tyler a friendly reminder to make this about fun and not get overly serious about the catch. We’re both competitive in nature and as soon as we pulled onto the muskrat lake I found myself running at first, stars in my eyes,  from hut to hut, ax in hand, to see if they were active or not. I had to laugh at my hypocrisy. After the initial excitement wore off, I slowed down and started walking. That’s how Tyler and I divy up the work of trapping rats. I go ahead scouting the pushups with my ax, opening up the chambers and he makes the sets when I find an active, or wet, hut. In a place as cold and windy as northeast Alaska, a  good number of pushups are already froze-out by February. A rat lake can have say a hundred or more huts on it and maybe only 40 or so are being kept open for use. Mink and caribou are a contributor to freeze-outs. A mink will dig into a hut to hunt a rat and they don’t bother reinsulating the pushup when they leave. Caribou will go up to a hut and kick it apart to have a snack. The weather is warmer than last year and we’re hopeful that will improve the trapping and overall rat survival. Tyler used pushup material to bed the traps on to keep the steel dry and the traps working. We carefully rebuilt the hole we made in the hut and shovelled them up with lots of snow for extra insulation. The kids were good sports and we got 30 sets made today. Moving from hut to hut, Tyler would pull up the snowmachine with the kids riding the runners of the dogsled and if Tyler moved without the kids, Blaze would scream and yell that he missed his ride. Funny to see a 4-year-old having a tantrum on the surface of a frozen lake 80 miles above the arctic circle because they didn’t get to ride the runners or because their sibling stole their turn to pack a muskrat into the sled. Children will be children no matter where you raise them.

The sun came out for a short while and it was blinding, but after a long dark arctic winter you can’t complain about the sun being too bright. In fact, it’s always hard not to stare at it when it finally returns, something we have to remind the kids not to do every spring. We had such a fun beautiful time today that it was on my mind that this could be one of the best days of my life. The bush is a wonderful place to spend time as a family. The scent of a rat house comes right out at you when you open it up. We had fun trying to think up descriptive words to capture the unique smell. A strangely pleasant, very rich, earthy, grassy, kind of spicy, marine smell. At the end of the day we rode home and got the gas powered ice auger out to get water from the lake the easy way. No more melting snow. (No more rabbit pellets in the water bucket!) The ice was so thick we didn’t get to water after sinking the 4 foot bit and had to use our ice chisel to finish it off. My arms are tired from swinging the ax and my right hand and forearm is scratched up from digging into the hut and feeling for the runs. In bed now, I still have plant matter plastered to my fingernails from digging. For dinner I made spaghetti noodles with melted butter and fried up some Italian moose sausage I made to go along with it. Hopefully we’ll sleep better tonight.

2-12-24

It’s the morning of the first check and we’re all excited and hopeful. Taking guesses at how many rats we’ll catch. We caught an ermine on the portage trail on our way over!  Dangling frozen from a front paw just like a marten. It was exciting to look out over the lake with 30 sets out there, each one like a Christmas present, wrapped and waiting for us to open it. In our country, muskrats live on the North side of the lakes because the wind typically comes from the north or northeast, and really batters the south/southwest shorelines. The vegetation that the muskrats east and build with takes hold on the lee side which is more sheltered by the Mountains and treeline. The south side of the lakes has a tremendous amount of drift built up.  Earth and sand from the summertime and snowdrifts as high as houses in the winter.

 It was time to see how we’d do in comparison to last year’s muskrat trip. We got lucky on our first set. When we opened up the fist mound, we noticed a tug on the trap chain much like the pull on the tension you’ll feel on the end of a fishing pole after hooking into a good fish.  We all four cheered and gave high fives when we pulled out a plump,dry rat. It dodged around on the snow for a minute, jumping and snapping at us before we gave it a quick whack on the head with the ax handle. Last year, following the advice of the Alaska How-to Handbook,  we allowed enogh slack in the chains for the rats to dive back into their tunnels to drown.Letting them dive may be the thing to do when trapping in really warm weather, but not in zero temps. We hope that works to keep them from plugging the hole and freezing in. The tunnels are kept open by all the rats coming and going and a drowned rat plugs the tunnel keeping other rats out, thus resulting in frozen tunnels and froze-in rats. This year, out of the 30 sets we ran, just one rat got a chance to dive and we had to do some chiseling. After we got the rat out we mended the pushup, pulled that trap and reinsulated the hut hoping they might still be able to use it. The rest of our sets were in good shape and out of the remaining 29 sets we got 2 ring offs. In one all that remained was a front foot and the other rat managed to flee just as Tyler was cautiously reaching into grab it with his gloved hand. Tyler had a bit of a man tantrum over the lost rat as it kerplunked back down into its hole. “You should see me when I lose a wolverine!”, he said after we gave him a hard time about it. Besides the bad fortune of a freeze-down or a ring off, there are two other outcomes we see when trapping rats. A good solid catch or a snapped trap full of aquatic weeds. It’s just a matter of chance whether or not the rat comes up from its hands-free or pushing a pile of food ahead of itself. If it’s got a load it’s a lucky rat, if it comes up empty handed it gets what Sidney and Blaze call “the happy snap of the trap”, and winds up drying on a stretcher in the cabin that night. We ended up with 15 rats from our 30 sets today. Everyone was happy with that. The kids had fun and learned a lot with us. I’m blown away by what the underwater world of the muskrat must be like in the winter. If the ice is nearly 4 ft thick and the pushups are all near the shore, I can only imagine that the ice near the shore is frozen to the bottom a significant amount of the way out into the lake and I am wondering what that looks like and how they keep all of these runs in working order. I made a chilli mac for supper with dried chilli spices. dried chilli beans and noodles. Like a homemade mountain house. After a day on the ice it tasted delicious. Tyler is saving all the rat legs as he skins them for a big feast back on the river.

2-13-24

We woke up wondering what we’d see today. Things went smoothly and we’re getting faster. Out of 29 sets we caught 19 rats. We would have had 23, but 4 were ring-outs. The  ring-outs are hard to take but still better than the dives where the rats freeze into the hole. We’re using all victor jump traps which are supposed to grab the leg high, reducing ring-outs and when they work they work, but they don’t always work. The drowning sets could work if you had time to run the sets continually around the clock but with two young children to teach and care for we have our own pace of life. It was 15 degrees today and beautiful. The kids love riding the runners of the dogsled behind the snowmachine. It makes them feel like big kids. We’re going to pack in the morning and pull traps on our way back to the main camp. It will be a long day. While Tyler skinned  the day’s 19 rats, I fried corn pone and some alsatian moose sausage I made to go along with it. We’ve been reading Shadows on the Koyukuk  aloud to the kids for their bedtime story lately. Sidney finished reading her first long chapter book tonight, The Witches, a Roald Dahl story. We are so proud of her reading! The bush has proven a most excellent educational setting. No internet, no tv, no commuting, no town errands, no bustling schedule to keep to. Life is simple and it’s so much easier to focus on what you’re doing out here than it is in town.

2-14-24

Valentines Day. Pulled traps. Thirteen muskrats today, making 47 total. Nine losses to ring-offs. Two accidental freeze-outs of the huts. Three muskrats we had to chip out. It was a great trip. We headed back out the trail towards the river and main camp after pulling the sets and banking up the huts. Good fast run on a good hard trail. Sunny. Fresh caribou sign along the edges of the lakes and meadows where they are kicking up hay to eat. Dogs pulled to beat the band for a few miles trying to catch caribou that had been using our trail. Saw lots of ptarmigan on the river when we got close to main camp and picked up another marten and an ermine. All the ptarmigan in our country are really flighty. Here at home in main camp Tyler skinned the last 13 rats while I manned the stove and thawed out the frozen cabin. A 16×20 log house is sure a nice sized place  to live in but it takes a while to warm it up again when you leave it set for a while. I warmed  a frozen pot of moose curry with rice I had reserved for our first night back. No cooking! We are happy to be “‘home”, drinking water from our pitcher pump well and sleeping in our most comfortable beds.

2-15-24

Tonight I cooked up muskrat legs. I made them exactly like fried chicken. While they fried in my big cast iron skillet on the woodstove Blaze came to sit on the chair next to the corner of the stove and declared “Those look like fine fat rat legs!” He ate more fried rat legs than anyone else in the family. Just kept gnawing and stuffing them in. After dinner I asked “Should Mamma make a pizza tomorrow?”,and Blaze just said, ”No! Rat legs!”. It’s fun to see how the kids are influenced by their experiences. Blaze is really satisfied that he got to go trapping for a few days straight. At playtime outside today he was Sidney’s father. He mushed all over the yard “trapping” extravagant numbers of animals and hunted for a ”great feast”  of ptarmigan to share with his daughter. It was adorable!

Thanks for reading! The summer is flying and full of life’s ups and downs. Tyler is known for his love of the woods and that is where work has carried him this season. He did some guiding, helped make someone a remote airstrip for a super cub and is now out building a deck for a cabin. I have single handedly worked the garden this year…and I have some pride over that, haha. I had a 2 week stretch somewhere in there that I was able to concentrate on my cookbook work but that’s been stalled for a while now because of the gardening and sewing things to sell in the shop in town. We have only the short window to socialize in town so I’m also the Mom that always says yes to gatherings and playdates for the kids.

This seems like a summer that everyone is getting hit in some way with cantankerous weather. We just got though a week of choking smoke from two large wildfires near Fairbanks. The upper Midwest got hit hard with flooding. My parents home was flooded and damaged severely. They woke up at 2am to the sound of pipes groaning and breaking in their basement. The entire downstairs floor of their house was under water and they lost most of personal belongings on that floor level. In retirement my Grandpa Pete took to making beautiful German style clocks. One of his best pieces of work was on a cabinet on the main floor of their house and it was a relief to hear that it was high enough up and survived the flood.