Our garage is a graveyard of maimed and/or obliterated backpacks (yes, we're pack rats).
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"I know people can be pack rats, but it's better than losing the things you once loved," he said.
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"Pack rats are definitely a pest, and you wouldn't consider they have value when they're filling your grill," Dr. Tessler said.
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For more than 50 years, Chris Strachwitz has been one of the music world's great pack rats and champions of American folk styles, as a record collector and the founder of Arhoolie Records.
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We caught up with Kondo to ask her all our most burning questions, including whether or not Americans are the biggest pack-rats, how men and women differ when it comes to purging stuff, and how to balance being both a minimalist and a die-hard clotheshorse.
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The five-winged spiderling (Boerhavia intermedia) then becomes the dominant annual on this preserve and in neighboring Tempe. Native wildlife include jackrabbits, and small desert- adapted species such as pack rats.
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The nymph is similar in appearance but it is smaller and lacks wings. This insect and others of its genus live in the nests of animals such as pack rats (genus Neotoma). They become pests when they invade houses. They bite humans, producing irritation to the skin and sometimes severe allergic reactions.
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Crickets, spiders, pseudoscorpions, mites, and springtails may live their full lifecycles in the cave. They are dependent on organic material packed in by other animals or washed in from the surface. Other animals use the cave, but must leave to forage for food. These include chipmunks, mice, pack rats, and several species of bats.
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Desert pack rats such as the desert woodrat gather these balls around their burrows, creating a defense against most predators like kit fox and coyote, however several species of snake feed on the rat keeping its population balanced. The cactus wren can be found perched on the cholla and other cacti. They also use a variety of cacti for nesting purposes.
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Recent rainfall often results in a flurry of surface activity. The rosy boa forages mainly for small mammals, but has occasionally been known to take other prey items, such as lizards, birds, and mammals. Pack rats, baby rabbits, deer mice, and kangaroo rats make up a large portion of its diet. The rosy boa is one of the slowest- moving species of snakes in the world.
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Living quarters are also often built against rock crevices, at the base of creosote or cactus plants, or in the lower branches of trees. Rock crevices appear preferred where available, but pack rats generally adapt to any situation. Wood rat (Neotoma lepida) midden Woodrats construct houses for nesting, food caching, and predator escape. These can have up to six entrances and eight internal chambers, including both nests and food caches.
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Desert woodrats are relatively small for pack rats, measuring in length, including a tail. They weigh from , with males being larger than females. Their coloring varies between individuals, and can be anything from pale gray to cinnamon to near-black. Regardless of the color on the rest of the body, however, the animal's underparts and feet are always white, while the otherwise pale fur on the throat region is gray at its base.
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The gardens are home to 195 bird species, ranging from kites, mallards, falcons and kestrels to quail, plovers, swallows, starlings and woodpeckers. Mammalian residents include California ground squirrels, Audubon cottontails, kangaroo rats, gophers, coyotes, gray foxes, opossums, pack rats, skunks and bobcats. Reptiles, including turtles, lizards of many kinds, and snakes, ranging from gopher snakes to the venomous rattlers, also populate the gardens. Amphibian residents include bullfrogs, western toads, salamanders and Pacific Tree Frog.
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The original O'odham diet consisted of regionally available wild game, insects, and plants. Through foraging, Oʼodham ate a variety of regional plants, such as: ironwood seed, honey mesquite, hog potato, and organ-pipe cactus fruit. While the Southwestern United States did not have an ideal climate for cultivating crops, Oʼodham cultivated crops of white tepary beans, papago peas, and Spanish watermelons. They hunted pronghorn antelope, gathered hornworm larvae, and trapped pack rats for sources of meat.
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The region's estimated total vegetation cover is 15% in the star dunes and about 10% in the low transverse or crescentic dunes areas. These percentages are substantially greater than in most active dune fields, where vegetation covers of 15% are more typical.[Seely and Louw, 1980] Several teams have examined the middens built by pack rats as a proxy for ancient vegetation regimes.Van Devender, T.R. and Spaulding, W.G., Development of vegetation and climate in the southwestern United States, Science, 204, 701-710, 1979.
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Image showing the six most common speleothems. The “Witch’s Finger” in the Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico A stalagmite ( or ; from the Greek , from , "dropping, trickling")σταλαγμίας, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek- English Lexicon, on Perseus. is a type of rock formation that rises from the floor of a cave due to the accumulation of material deposited on the floor from ceiling drippings. Stalagmites are typically composed of calcium carbonate, but may consist of lava, mud, peat, pitch, sand, sinter and amberat (crystallized urine of pack rats).
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The species is known in Mexico and the western United States, including Oregon, California, Nevada, and Arizona. It has also been recorded in a home in Klickitat County, Washington. Both genders of P. americana have been found in the nests of the Veromessor chicoensis (a harvester ant, also classified as Messor chicoensis), where they reside during the day, and emerge at night to feed on the debris pile around the nest. Nymphs of P. americana were taken from houses of pack rats (genus Neotoma) in Orange County, California.
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She was a vocal activist with the gay rights organization Grupo Auê in Rio in the 1970s and '80s, coordinating a precursor to the Encontro Brasileiro de Homossexuais (Brazilian Gathering of Homosexuals) in that city. Her poetry also deals with feminist themes and the rejection of traditional social roles and structures: "I am always revolted with the game of appearances and with the hypocrisy of the family relationship or the relationship of two people. And my poetry questions those imposed social roles that are manipulative and responsible for the internalization of submission, of castration, of guilt, and of low female esteem." Her role as an activist and the Brazilian "patron saint of hippy pack rats," as the Miami Herald once described her, included amassing a library of alternative newspapers, magazines, mimeographs, and posters from the era of Brazil's military dictatorship.
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In London, during the Great Plague of 1665, a plague rat named Melbourne Bumblescratch tells stories to (and occasionally steals from) the other rats passing by. Despised for this, Melbourne spends a great deal of his time dodging those whom he has wronged; including his long suffering fiancée, Bethesda; and Socrates who is the King of the Pack Rats. In the first scene, Melbourne inadvertently pickpockets a blue and white jewel from Socrates, thinking that all he was taking was a mere morsel of cheese (London In The Plague) but by the time he realizes what he's stolen, and from whom he's stolen it, it's too late. As he makes his escape, Melbourne meets a juvenile, homeless rat named Perry who takes an instant liking to the storyteller and refuses to leave Melbourne's side (Thank You Sir).
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