Campaign diary: Little is known about this mysterious mammal | Wildlife

I borrowed a friend’s dog to walk from her house in Saint-Laurent Abbey in Combelongue. Joe is a good dog – a border collie with a serious character and venerable years. I like to have a dog with me when I go for a walk. They have what the Anglo-Welsh poet Jeremy Hooker, in a fine essay on writing from nature, defined as “the view of the gap”. Its value was demonstrated almost immediately when we took a steep road leading up to the wooded hills, with the Ruisseau de Maury quickly following it.

Joe’s ears were pricked up. He glanced into the creek – “watchful for the slightest sight” (Coleridge) – where the water was flowing rapidly over a bed of gravel. Suddenly he dived in and came out with something in his mouth. I wasn’t worried about what he grabbed. He’s a sweet dog with a sweet mouth, so I reached out for anything.

He dropped the strangest little mammal I have ever seen. About the size of a small mole, with tiny eyes, he had a dark coat of coarse outer hair and a thin inner coat. Its large hind legs were webbed and its tail longer than its body. His long muzzle quivering with vibrissae (whiskers), ended with two prominent nostrils.

I knew instantly what it was, even though I’d never seen one before, let alone held one. It was the “trumpet rat” – Galemys pyrenaicus, the Pyrenean desman to give it its proper name. Extremely rare, its population is very local. Over the past decade, it has declined to the point that its long-term survival is questionable.

Very little is known about the Pyrenean desman, its reproductive cycle or its young. It feeds on small crustaceans and larvae that it pulls from under the stones. You could tell it’s not the most attractive creature on the planet, and it certainly seems, on the brief acquaintance I’ve had with it, sharp and aggressive. But I would be too if I were thus torn from my habitat.

I asked Joe to sit down, leaned over the water, released the desman into his proper element, where he quickly plunged back into the unknowns of his mysterious life.