Feel Like You're Living In A Waste Basket?

The desert areas of North America are populated by a large variety of rodent species. In my opinion, the most attractive of these (remember, I’m a biologist) are the Kangaroo Rats (genus Dipodomys), of which there are 22 species. The truth is, these are not rats, but are actually more closely related to the squirrels. They are called Kangaroo Rats because of their long hind legs and long tails, which they use in the same manner as kangaroos in locomotion.

Kangaroo rats are nocturnal animals, and are actually relatively easy to catch. When my brother and I were in graduate school in southeastern Washington, it wasn’t uncommon on Saturday nights during late summer or early fall for small groups of biology majors to head down toward the confluence of the Walla Walla and Columbia Rivers where there was still a significant amount of desert scrub: sage brush, grasses and various herbaceous plants. Driving the dirt trails, students straddling the headlights of a car and armed with insect nets could sweep up “dippies”, which is what we called them, as the animals hopped down the road in front of the vehicle. The animals are relatively docile, and I don’t recall anyone ever being bitten by a specimen when it was being handled, even when freshly caught.

In August of our second year, the two of us had brought a dippy back to the office we shared. We had a nice-sized metal waste basket (about 24 inches tall) that we filled with papers, and placed our new co-resident into it as his new home. We got a Petri dish, filled it with a variety of seeds, and placed it along with a second dish filled with water beside the container.

In a short time, the paper in the waste basket had been shredded; we added more. Over time, the basket was completely filled with shredded, fairly compacted paper into which our dippy had fashioned tunnels and a burrow. It would come out in late afternoons and evenings, ignoring our presence, and hop around the room, eat some seeds, sip water occasionally, and then return to its burrow. After a while we introduced a 2 inch diameter Super ball, which Dippy learned to push around the room.

All of the biology staff and other graduate students were acquainted with our pet, as were the janitors. We made sure they knew not to empty that container, no matter how full it looked.

After about five months, my brother returned to the office from a lab one afternoon, only to discover, to his horror, an empty waste basket. Unknown to us, a new janitorial worker had been assigned to our building. Not realizing that the full wastebasket wasn’t a trashcan, she had dumped the whole thing in the large trash container behind the building.

Rushing outside, my brother pulled the lid off, and looked down. There, on top of all the trash was a small, forlorn-looking kangaroo rat, small front legs folded as if pleading for help.

Over the years, the vision of that small animal, seeming to implore the viewer for rescue has remained in my mind. In fact, there have been times that I felt like I was in the same position. Have you ever wished that someone would come along, lift the lid off the trash heap we live on, and rescue you? Oh, how much I wish the Lord would come back to take us to the nice home He’s preparing for us. I believe the promise, don’t you?

Dr. G