Rats, Mice, & Snakes: Rat Personalities

Cabin on the Christine Marie Claim

It was an especially dry year. Eastern Oregon had very little snow in the preceding winter and no spring rains. When I arrived at my cabin on the Christine Marie Claim, there was no moisture in the soil at all. Every step created a dust cloud.

Notice the poles over the doorway.

I had lived in the cabin for several mining operations. I built it after I determined that the drive everyday from the cabins above was too dangerous and time consuming to be driven every day. I worked on building the cabin slowly and sporadically over two years. Like the cabins above on the saddle, it is built against a rock wall. This wall, however, is the side of a huge boulder that had rolled down from above at an earlier time.
The cabin is made out of large rocks, scraps of wood, old plywood flooring and four long poles. I spent a total of $34.00 on its construction – mostly for nails and a glass window. The room is about 10 feet square with a door opening and window in the front wall and one window in the other two walls. The rock wall in the back of the cabin is fairly vertical with only a slight slope down to the relatively flat floor. The four polls are mounted to the top of the rock and extend out past the front wall. These poles support the plywood which was covered with dirt and rocks for the roof. Where these poles are mounted to the
large boulder there is narrow space between the roof and the rock. It is here that our nightly friends live – or at least enter and exit the cabin.

The wash basin is hiding in the corner to the left of the stove.

I got all of the equipment running and started to mine Morrisonite. Sleep comes easy to a tired miner, and the antics of our nocturnal friends living between the ceiling and the rock can be particularly irritating. This year there were some young rats entering the cabin every night to look around. I say they were young because they were not very big, yet very energetic. They would come down the back wall and make all kinds of racket busily inspecting and climbing on everything in the cabin. They would knock cans of food off the shelf and walk all over my propane stove as noisily as possible retrieving the scraps left on it from my dinner.

One night after I had chased the rats away several times and did not want to get out of my bunk again, I just laid there and watched them. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move on the rock wall beside my bunk. Much to my surprise, moving very slowly down the rock wall was a HUGE rat, not making a sound.
The two rats below, however, started a soccer game. Next to my propane stove there was a large metal wash basin which was ½ full of dirty dish water. The huge mama rat made her way to the wash basin very quietly and sniffed the water inside.

Books and literature on pack rats will tell you that rats do not drink water. They say rats get all their moisture from the vegetation they eat. This five pound rat looked thirsty but also looked like she was afraid of water. She took her front legs, put them on the rim of the wash basin and spread them out as far as she could. Then, one at a time brought her hind legs up onto the rim. Balancing herself spread eagle on the edge of the wash basin, she carefully lowered her head and took a long drink of dirty dish water. Below, one of the other rats scored a goal. Carefully, the big rat reversed her position, hopped off the basin, made her way to and slowly up the rock wall, and disappeared without making a sound.

With the younger two still volleying, I tried to get back to sleep.