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What a day! I woke up from a long slumber, refreshed and ready to satisfy my urge for some nuts or maybe if I'm lucky, some subterranean fungi. Yum! Before I scampered out of my nest of twigs, I looked around and thought about how much time and energy my ancestors had spent building it. My grandfather and grandmother built it over 5 years ago, long before my mother was even a twinkle in their eyes. I guess this would be a good time to introduce myself, my name is Hubert, and I’m a one year-old dusky-footed woodrat who lives in Poly Canyon. Now, I'm almost a year old, and live in the nest with my mother and two sisters. Our nest is on the ground, however, many woodrats build their nests in trees, some as high as 50ft above the ground! Besides having a safe place to sleep, nests are terrific places to store food for the cold months. Poly Canyon is a wonderful place for us woodrats to live; there is plenty of dense riparian woodland and chaparral for all of us to thrive in. However, it is a wonderful place for predators to live as well. From as long as I can remember, mom has always warned us to stay in dense brush at all times, because at any moment an owl could swoop down and take one of us forever. Just last week my sister Patti saw a mean ol' owl take away one of the Johnson boys on the other side of the creek; she was so scared she didn't sleep for days.
Hindprint (25-34mm) and tracking pattern Sticks, bark, plant cuttings, and miscellaneous items in a conical pile below a bluff. Nests up to 8' (2.5 m) high and 8' in diameter are often in or against a tree or shrub; there are openings where tree limbs protrude. Kingdom: Animalia A tourist wanders into a back-alley antique shop in San Francisco's Chinatown. Picking through the objects on display he discovers a detailed, life-sized bronze sculpture of a rat. The sculpture is so interesting and unique that he picks it up and asks the shop owner what it costs. "Twelve dollars for the rat, sir," says the shop owner, "and a thousand dollars more for the story behind it." "You can keep the story, old man," he replies, "but I'll take the rat." By the time he's walked two blocks, at least a hundred rats are at his heels, and people begin to point and shout. He walks even faster, and soon breaks into a trot as multitudes of rats swarm from sewers, basements, vacant lots, and abandoned cars. Rats by the thousands are at his heels, and as he sees the waterfront at the bottom of the hill, he panics and starts to run full tilt. No matter how fast he runs, the rats keep up, squealing hideously, now not just thousands but millions, so that by the time he comes rushing up to the water's edge a trail of rats twelve city blocks long is behind him. Making a mighty leap, he jumps up onto a light post, grasping it with one arm while he hurls the bronze rat into San Francisco Bay with the other, as far as he can heave it. Pulling his legs up and clinging to the light post, he watches in amazement as the seething tide of rats surges over the breakwater into the sea, where they drown. Shaking and mumbling, he makes his way back to the antique shop. "Ah, so you've come back for the rest of the story," says the owner. “No," says the tourist, "I was wondering if you have a bronze politician."
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