From the “Mother Nature” department…

A local story for my fellow Minnesotans, from the Duluth News-Tribune:

Muskrat wreaks havoc in tire shop

A recent break-in at an Iron Range tire shop had grown men screaming and jumping on desks.

What was first believed to be a giant rat by employees returning to work after a weekend turned out to be a misguided muskrat. The rodent had wandered through the front door sometime during a three-hour span Jan. 26 while the shop’s interior was being painted.

Following the animal’s trail was aided by the white footprints it left after getting into some paint.

“I was the first one into work that morning and the first one out,” said Shannon Bergman, an off-the-road tire salesman at Taconite Tire, a Goodyear dealer in Virginia. “I walked in and in the waiting area I saw this big rat, and I took off.”

Then chaos broke loose.

“It was pretty humorous,” said Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Conservation officer Dan Starr, who filed a report on the invasion. “Here were these big, burly outdoors guys running around screaming.”

For the exciting dénouement, click here.