More on the sort of minor inconveniences that come with living in the wilderness….
26 Sep (Sun) The last few nights a woodrat has been lurking around, making lots of racket. Lucky for me, I’ve been sleeping really hard of late so only wake up a little then fall right back to sleep. But I clearly recall being here back when JD and then Jim Kohman was the ranger—that is, pre-cats-at-Piute era—and waking up in the night to what sounded like a team of mice up in the loft engaged in soccer practice. I’d lay awake for an hour or so with the pillow folded over my head before finally drifting off again. Tedious. (Something about on-again-off-again, rustling-type sounds made by living things makes them hard to sleep through.) Woodrats, though, are somethin’ else entire. The first night or two I heard it scurrying across the roof and up’n’down the rear wall. Back and forth it went. But last night the gosh-darn thing managed to get in the cabin. (Heard it rearranging the woodpile.) When I woke up, Shitbird, lead Piute RPO [Rodent Patrol Officer; spoof on Forest Service use of acronyms for job positions], was down there sniffing around and gazing intently into the space behind the tall cabinet. I shone the flashlight in there but saw no fresh, jumbo-sized rodent turds. Funny thing is, despite all the ruckus, I can’t really tell where the sound is coming from. And don’t even know how this rat’s getting in. Those gaps under the eaves? Nah…I doubt there’s any one place big enough that a critter larger than a deermouse could squeeze through. (If it’s a particularly audacious woodrat, the thing might be coming through the cat door.) Note: Shitbird has caught—and eaten—young wood rats, in the past. Lucy, who’s been sleeping by my head since it turned cold, seems to be ignoring the thing entirely. So this might be one of them ferocious, bull-woodrats. (They can get to be surprisingly large; Peterson field guide says up to twenty ounces!) Alls I can say is, I wish it’d GO AWAY. ◦◦◦◦◦
Left the cabin for my four days off, taking the cats.(Various end-of-season duties would keep me away too long to leave them at the cabin on their own so they got to spend the next few weeks living at the FS warehouse in town.) Upon my return, more rodent shenanigans:
1 Oct (Fri) ◦◦◦◦◦ That blankety-blank-blank woodrat really went to town tonight. It apparently moved in whilst I was gone and straightaway got into the catfood tin—pried the lid off no problemo and hauled off a pound or so of kitty kibble, caching it somewhere. One mystery solved: she/he comes in through the cat-door. I’d duct-taped it shut before leaving the cabin when I left last Sunday and upon returning found that the varmint had chewed a hole through the Visqueen® that I’d taped over the glassless window pane above the shelf by the stove. Anyway, this time it kept me awake for what seemed like hours. These critters are loud! ◦◦◦◦◦
Two days later:
3 Oct (Sun) Woodrat kept me awake again, clawing at the (re)plastic-covered window. I’d hear it, wake up, shine the flashlight…it’d skitter off. Minutes later, rat’s back and I’d wake up again. Finally got smart: got up, went outside and, with a full gallon can of white gas set on the window sill, covered up the glassless pane such that “Super Raton” (Lorenzoism) can’t even get to the plastic. Didn’t exactly work as planned, though: the rest of the night it clawed and scratched and scrabbled around the gas can, making claw-on-metal sounds that were even more aggravating. Incredibly persistent creatures they are! This morning, went up into the loft to see if there was any obvious damage and found that, while I was gone, my intruder had gotten into the cardboard box full of toilet paper rolls and had shredded a half dozen of ‘em. (Never just one. Rodents always have to sample the whole lot….) So, in some dark corner of the loft there’s likely a well-appointed rat nest of made of shredded TP and stocked with a winter’s worth of kitty krunchies. Guess I have me a new housemate.
Left the cabin again a couple of days later, after properly blocking off the entry points. Apparently, this did the trick—there was no sign that my new housemate had been in the cabin when I returned three weeks later to shut the place down for the winter. Thank god. It was a real relief to not have to worry about what sort of disaster I’d find waiting for me upon returning in the spring.
©2025 Tim Forsell 12 Jul 2025
