With Uncle San's Naturalists 



9-9-32 



out thr,t the Colorado wood rats* one of the favorite foods of the Navajo Indians, 

 arc olcntiful in tho country where soiao of the early 03^)1 orors starved to death. 

 Those explorers ai^t have crossed, throu^ the wilderness in safety, if they had 

 rcaLizod how easily they could have supplied thenselvos witj? plenty of such del- 

 icate, delicious sniall game. 



Ml our wood rats seem to have a passion for "building houses mt of almost 

 anytloin^; they can carry off. They have been called "pack rats" and "trade rats" 

 and lacny wild stories have "been told about their habits of borrowing nnd returning 

 things. However, the real facts are more fascinating than the fictions. 



Take the hoary wood rats for instance. Hoary wood rats live in the open 

 aild vrlleys where cactus and other thorny desert shrubs grow. They build thorny 

 walled houses in the cidst of beds of big prickley-pears of thorny bushes, or in 

 groups of Spanish bayonets or in allthorn. 



Tha.t sounds like a pretty good defense doesn't it? A house of thorns cer- 

 tainly doesnH sound inviting to intruders. But you nd^t think that life among 

 thorns would not be all roses for the hoary wood rats themselves. Hov/ever, Mr. 

 Ba-iley tells ne he has seen one of these hoary wood rats, as bri^t and pretty 

 as a squirrel or a chipnunk, climb over a mass of thorns and appa-rently never get 

 the subtest scratcai on its delicate pinlc feet. 



The caxtus is the hoary wood rat's food and driak. It eats both the flesh 

 and the fruit of the caxtus, besides a, great variety of green vegetation, and 

 fruits, and seeds. He lives on wide stretclies of desert, where there is no water 

 to be had for months at a time, except what water is contained in the desert food 

 plants. 



If cactus growing ever becomes an iinportajit industry, both the hoary wood 

 rat and the white- throated wood rat, may become serious enemies to the business. 

 Some years, much of the desert vegetation is killed by them, jls it is, Mr, Bailey 

 explains, rltho'a^ they may do some local damage on the edges of irrigated fields 

 and gaj:-dens, these wood rats are in the main harmless, interesting features of 

 the desert. 



We cajiH tell you all the interesting things Mr. Bailey told about the 

 different American rats. The important thing to remember is that there are rats 

 and rats, and jrou can't judge the cleanly, delicious tasting imericazi wood ra.ts 

 by the altogether bad sped cs of Old World animals to which we happen to have 

 first applied the same general name. 



The same thing can be said of mice. We can't judge all the najiy native 

 inert can mice by those damaging little European house mice tha.t give us so nuch 

 trouble. 



Don't mistake ne. Some of our native American mice give us plenty of 

 trouble too. Others we can class as neutral: that is, the harm they do is just 

 about balanced by their good habits, or they just spend their lives where they 

 arc not in conflict with our interests. And we have still other nice that may 

 bo classed as downrt^t beneficial. 



Mr, Baiioy has suggested that our grasshopper or scorpion or calling nice 

 d^t well be used as pots for the children, - ~' 



