The last three days I have gone down to my tracking spot under the bridge and found fresh rat tracks. I've seen rat tracks there previously, but never this frequently and never as many as this. The first two days were actually pretty similar to the rat trails I've seen before except there were fresh trails on consecutive days. Today there were a lot more trails so I wonder if a rat decided it was a nice hangout lately and brought his friends back. I didn't see anything that convinced me that it was multiple rats interacting, but it seems reasonably likely to me that it was more than one rat.
I wonder why the sudden increase in rat activity there. The river had been relatively high within the last couple of days and has since been receding, but much of the rat activity occurred above where the water reached, so I don't know that it was due to the change in water levels. I didn't notice them to be focused on any particular thing (like the stinky salmon corpse rotting nearby). Nor did I notice them feeding on anything, though it's possible I just missed them picking up insects or whatever.
I'm not sure whether it was a black rat (Rattus rattus) or a norway rat (Rattus norvegicus). Elbroch has norway rat tracks in his book, but not black rat and I didn't find any useful information about black rat tracks on a cursory inspection of the Internet. It is my understanding that both species live in this area.
I guess I could try and get a glimpse of the rat as it is making the tracks, or live trap one, but I'm not sure I'm quite motivated enough to do that at this point. However, if anybody has information on differentiating between the species, please let me know.
It's interesting to me how different these tracks look despite being from the same animal. I would guess the difference is due to substrate.
2 comments:
I read a very good book a while back called "Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants" I forget the author off the top of my head, but it was realy interesting. The author basically chooses the most disgusting rat-infested alley he can find in Manhattan and sits there at night for a year. There's not much in the way of technical tracking info, but lots and lots about behavior and history. Super interesting. I came across it when I was in the process of choosing a sit spot on Capital Hill and was worried about rat contact.
p.s. Thanks for the great pictures :)
Hi Deanna!
Thanks for the suggestion. I just put a request in for it at the library.
Post a Comment