Muskrat

Thanks. I started wanting to know the world around me when I was 3 or so. My parents indulged my desire with hordes of field guides and lots of outdoor trips. Some of those images are ingrained in my memory to the point that when I see something, I simply say the name, even if I've never encountered it, and don't remember where I saw the picture. Math was never my strong suit, so I went into art instead of science. Noah is the perfect place for me. Are beavers not protected in California? My guess would be a muskrat too, unless you have seen a beaver and this rivaled it's size

Oh... Wiki notes that california eradicated coypu/nutria and you are at the southern most range for muskrat. I suppose if you did find a nutria, you should call CFWD

What approx size was this? Nutria look like Muskrat, but are quite a bit larger... like a small beaver(living in the NW I've seen a beaver boar that must have weighed in at well over 50 pounds and he was sitting sedately in a drainage ditch at the side of a road in a busy part of Salem Or). Nutria or Coypu have been introduced in parts of N America apparently. So you have a chance of it being either. Nutria have much shorter denser fur, however. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coypu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muskrat

I don't beleive it is a beaver, for the tail is diffrent. A beavers tail looks like http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/gutcheck/Beaver_Tail_1.jpg a muskrat tail looks like http://talk2theanimals.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Picture_087.jpg

Tail tells all! You wouldn't mistake a beaver because of the very obvious flat tail