Eps 4 and 5: No Muskrat Love,

No Muskrat Love

Season 1, Episodes 4 & 5

Producers

Michaela Burrell

Kyle Criscitello

Henry Scharfe

In 1871, the town of Fairport was a quaint village in Upstate New York, nestled about 9 miles east of Rochester, a major center of commerce and trade along the Erie Canal. Given its proximity to Rochester and the Genesee River, the town was naturally selected to become a part of the Erie Canal upon the beginning of its construction in 1817. It was here, on this comparatively short stretch of the mighty Erie Canal that the quaint little town of Fairport, NY experienced the unexpected wrath of not a hurricane, tornado, or any other natural catastrophe, but the wrath of the muskrat.

Works Cited:

“Attacked by Muskrats: Oswego County Man Bitten by Them as They Were Fleeing from a Swamp Fire.” Chicago Daily Tribune (Chicago, IL), October 31, 1897.

Morganstein, Martin. Joan H, Cregg. (2001). Images of America: Erie Canal. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. Pp. 108.

“Muskrats Cause a Flood: Eat Holes in a Canal Bank and Thirty Feet Collapse.” The New York Times (New York, NY), November 25, 1906. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/ abstract.html?res=9E0DE6D8173EE733A25756C2A9679D946797D6CF&url=http:%2F%2Ftimesmachine.nytimes.com%2Ftimesmachine%2F1906%2F11%2F25%2F101717182.html&legacy=true.

“Muskrat Causes Erie Canal Break.” Boston Daily Globe (Boston, MA), July 6, 1914.

Roberts, Susan. “Perinton and the Erie Canal Part 3.” Fairport-Perinton Herald-Mail August 26, 1987.

Calder, Rich. “Muskrat mania.” The New York Post. Last modified May 18, 2011. https://nypost.com/2011/05/18/muskrat-mania/.

Laut, Agnes C. The Fur Trade of America. New York: MacMillan, 1921.

Link, Russell. “Muskrats – Living with Wildlife.” Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Accessed October 10, 2017. http://wdfw.wa.gov/living/muskrats.html.

Murphy, Dan. The Erie Canal: the ditch that opened a nation. Buffalo: Western New York Wares, Inc., 2001.

Porter, Sweet A. “The Erie Canal in Perinton.” Perinton Papers. Perinton Historical Society, 1971.

Roberts, Nathan M. and Shawn M. Crimmins. “Do Trends in Muskrat Harvest Indicate Widespread Population Declines?” Northeastern Naturalist 17, no. 2 (2010): 229-238. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40664877?pq-origsite=summon&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.

Schmidt, Arno Erdman. The Accomplished Muskrat Trapper. Chicago: Boyle Brothers Inc., 1922.

Taft, Dave. “It’s a Beaver! It’s a Big ‘Water Rat’! No, It’s a Muskrat.” The New York Times. Last modified April 29, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/nyregion/ its-a-beaver-its-a-big-water-rat-no-its-a-muskrat.html.