The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

The Wood Rat, Pack Rat, or Trading Rat. Although I have met this wonderful creature (Neotoma) in various places on its native soil, I will quote from another and perfectly reliable observer a sample narrative of its startling mental traits. At Oak Lodge, east coast of Florida, we lived for a time in the home of a pair of pack rats whose eccentric work was described to me by Mrs. C. F. Latham, as follows: First they carried a lot of watermelon seeds from the ground floor upstairs, and hid them under a pillow on a bed. Then they took from the kitchen a tablespoonful of cucumber seeds and hid them in the pocket of a vest that hung upstairs on a nail. In one night they removed from box number one, eighty five pieces of bee-hive furniture, and hid them in another box. On the following night they deposited in box number one about two quarts of corn and oats. Western frontiersmen and others who live in the land of the pack rat relate stories innumerable of the absurd but industrious doings of these eccentric creatures. The ways of the pack rat are so erratic that I find it impossible to figure out by any rules known to me the workings of their minds. Strange to say, they are not fiends and devils of malice and destruction like the brown rat of civilization, and on the whole it seems that the destruction of valuable property is not by any means a part of their plan. They have a passion for moving things. Their vagaries seem to be due chiefly to caprice, and an overwhelming desire to keep exceedingly busy. I think that the animal psychologists have lost much by so completely ignoring these brain-busy animals, and I hope that in the future they will receive the attention they deserve. Why experiment with stupid and nerveless white rats when pack rats are so cheap?