What is this critter?

Mushrat, for sure!

Looks muskratty to me too

What part of the world do you live on? It looks an awful lot like a nutria too. I always get them mixed up though.

Looks like a fugly duck billed platypus to me.

...perhaps I should get some rest.

Fenika said:

Looks like a fugly duck billed platypus to me.

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That's redundant as hell.

I don't know about muskrat. Rat yes. But this page makes muskrats look more beaver-like, a shorter snout, for one.

It's not a good enough picture or context to say, but I can say that it is definitely not a moose

I thought nutria as well, then spent forty minutes looking up the difference between muskrats and nutria. It's hard to tell from the picture, but my guess is muskrat.

How big was it? Muskrats max out at around 4 lbs while nutria can get up to 20.

But the picture among the mowed grass suggests that this is small and likely a juvenile. The appearance of juveniles have a large common set in a Venn diagram. When our newborn lambs are laying in the pasture people often think it's so cute that a cottontail rabbit is laying next to the ewe.

The light color of the snout and hairless tail suggest an opossum to me.

MM

Maryn said:

That snout/muzzle looks way too long for a muskrat. I suspect it's a nutria or something closely related. (You want to click, because it's having a lollipop.)

Maryn, who still thinks the muzzle is too long

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It looks more as though it's about to have a couple of fingers.

MaryMumsy said:

The light color of the snout and hairless tail suggest an opossum to me.
MM

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Aren't possums sort of a light gray colour? All the ones I've seen here (all road-kill) are light-gray to almost white.

frimble3 said:

Aren't possums sort of a light gray colour? All the ones I've seen here (all road-kill) are light-gray to almost white.

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The adults tend to be grey. The juveniles tend to be darker.

Bunny Hugger, did you take the picture? Can you tell us more about the setting?

Young opossums are darker, a darker grey. That muskrat/ nutria is obviously brown. It looks like a muskrat to me.

It's hard to tell, but the tail looks laterally compressed, which would mean it's an aquatic animal. Buth nutria and muskrats have laterally compressed tails, but opossums and Norway rats don't. Hard to judge the size from a picture. It might be hard to tell the difference between a juvenile nutria and an adult muskrat, though.

It may be a nutria or coypu. I believe they're bigger than muskrat and have bristly, white whiskers, though it's hard to tell in that picture. Nutria have been introduced to much of the US. They're all over the place in Eugene, for instance, and I saw one roadkilled out here in central CA too, though they don't seem as tame and saucy down here (in Eugene, OR, they come right up to you and beg for food down by the Mill Race).

Here's a muskrat:

And here's a nutria: