Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/171645
Our Wedding Muskrat By Alison Hughes Illustration by Anne Keenan Higgins W hat is it with wildlife and weddings, anyway? Years ago, I'd had to deal with a sprawled bat that died theatrically in the church entrance where my sister was to be married. Bat disposal, in a bridesmaid dress and high heels, minutes before all the guests arrived, certainly hadn't been on the program. Just like "rescue muskrat" hadn't been on the to-do list for my wedding day. My husband actually did the rescuing. I sat in the car, clutching our wedding cake and murmuring "please don't get bitten, please don't get bitten…" All we needed was a long wait in a hospital emergency department for a rabies shot to top off the day. We were driving back from picking up our wedding cake, laughing and relaxed, very happy with the lovely day that was unfolding. Ours was to be a small, family wedding at a chapel, then a dinner reception at a grand old hotel in Edmonton. Low key, low drama. Suddenly my not-quite-yet husband hit the brakes, coming to a screaming stop."Whoa, CAKE here," I cried, gripping the unwieldy box. I imagined our beautifully smooth marzipan cake smooshed along one side like a child's birthday cake in the trunk on the way back from Safeway. "Sorry," he said, snapping on the hazards. "But we gotta help this little guy." He was out of the car before I knew what was happening. I looked vainly around for a small man requiring assistance. There were certainly no other people except my almost-husband walking in the street in honking traffic. Craning around the cake box, I saw him crouch down in front of our car. And then I saw the "little guy": a fat, scroungy, unlovely muskrat, scrabbling desperately at the curb of this busy city street. Now a muskrat, even in a nature picture designed to flatter, is a poor cousin to a beaver. They're scruffy, rat-tailed, yellow-toothed and lack the cachet of appearing on the nickel. They are basically river rats. Big ones. This one wasn't at his pastoral best either, frantically trying to climb the curb, which blocked him off from a slope down to the river. His river, his home. And there was my animallover, soon-to-be husband out there, in the middle of impatient traffic, with a desperate muskrat on his (bare) hands. Please don't get bitten, please don't get bitten… My role as useless, pleading chorus was getting increasingly tedious, but you can't do much with a big wedding cake on your lap. I watched as my husband recognized the futility of picking up the creature bare-handed, and ran to rummage in the trunk. A baseball mitt on each hand, he renewed the determined rescue, wrestling ludicrously with the ungainly rat. I giggled semi-hysterically, thinking that this certainly wasn't the way couples sailed into their wedding day on the bridal shows. But then again, not much about our preparations for the wedding had been textbookperfect. I'd bought my wedding gown from the sale rack of a Laura Ashley store alone on a rainy day in England, trying it on in my black socks. We'd returned home only a week before our marriage. A difficult relative had made the rehearsal a fiasco. And now the muskrat. My husband finally managed to coax the creature up onto the grass. The ungrateful fellow bustled off without a backward glance, slipping down into the long grass leading to the river. I watched my husband watch it leave. One of the many wonderful things my husband stands for is a deep respect and love for animals, no matter how inconvenient their appearance. He's the guy with the cat in his lap, with a dog at his heels. A guy who's brought home several lost dogs. A guy who wouldn't, who couldn't, leave a muskrat to die in traffic when he could help it, even on his own tightly-scheduled wedding day. We still laugh about our Wedding Muskrat. Oddly, absurdly, that little guy has a place in our memory of that special day. While no rabies shots were required, our ball gloves still bear his bite-marks. I'm only sorry that we didn't get a picture of him before he slipped into his green and blue river-life, completely unconcerned with times and dates and special occasions. We were never destined to have a textbook-perfect wedding day. But then again, wedding days aren't just planned and managed; they happen and unfold, with their own particular beauty. They don't always follow rules and timetables and etiquette books, no matter how much we might wish they would. The urgent, the unpredictable and even the absurd can always make a guest appearance. Like rain, sickness, car trouble, catering glitches or unruly relatives. Or a muskrat rescue. rw "We were never destined to have a textbookperfect wedding day." 20 RW21_part 1.indd 20 r ea l weddings 9/19/11 2:55:21 PM Photographer: Daniela Ciuffa; Dress: Bisou Bridal; Flowers: Evan Orion, Flowerz; Make-Up: Amanda Murray; Jewelry: Elsa Corsi. experience