🐭 awww ...A Baby Pack Rat suckling on The Mama 🐭
Like 1 Dislike 0 Published on 17 Jul 2014
Yesterday afternoon as I was sitting on the porch I saw
out of the corner of my eye two little tails poking out
of the bottom of the prickly pear cactus. When I looked
a bit more closely I realized it was a cute little baby
Pack Rat sucking on his Mama. awww... my heart
melted. What a gift to witness and share.
The Universe is always speaking to us ...
Sending us little messages, causing
coincidences and serendipity,
reminding us to stop, to look around,
to believe in something else, something more.
- Nancy Thayer
If you look, you will find beauty everywhere.
The Pack Rat (Neotoma) otherwise known as The Wood Rat, Trade Rat, or Cave Rat is a rat that has become infamous in tales of the North American West because of its unusual habit of collecting objects and storing them. You may chance upon the treasure trove of a Pack Rat and find all manner of interesting things such as an old nail, bits of tin, glass, bleached bones and old spectacles.
Tales associated with this rat speak of its unusual habit of leaving something behind when it takes something. For example when rifling through the pockets of an unsuspecting victim it will leave a few nuts behind or a pine cone. This is because when picking anything up it will immediately drop whatever it was that it was carrying first.
A popular tale tells how one such rat left behind some gold nuggets in a prospectors cabin in exchange for a few trivial trinkets. The story goes that the prospector followed the animals trail which led him to a gold bearing vein and was able to make his fortune.
The Pack Rat will inhabit cliffs, caves, open woodland and arid regions. He will literally build a home, known as a midden, among the branches of a tree or in a cactus growth. Its home may boast two rooms and be an impressive five or six feet high. It is constructed of sticks and grasses and lined with soft shredded bark or grass. The animal will make this his permanent residence and every so often it will do a few home improvement's
This rat has his whole living accommodation sorted. He has a storeroom for hoarding seeds, grains and nuts for the winter and a place for leaving its refuse.
Although these rats can be said to be fairly sociable and live in colonies, they do not go into each others homes. They are active at night and will feed on green vegetable matter which is sometimes left to dry on a rock and then taken home to be stored.
The pack rat will breed just once or twice a year and he will roam outside his usual home territory in search of a mate. Although the courtship may be fraught at first with a few fights, eventually the couple will settle down and sometimes remain together until after the young are born.
Four weeks after the mating there will be two to six babies and each weighing about ½ an ounce. As soon as they are weaned at three weeks old they will be able to forage for themselves and will sometimes stay with the mother even after they can find their own food.