We have a Bushy-Tailed Wood Rat building, and rebuilding, a nest in the engine of the BGF. So technically, I suppose we have a BTWR in the BGF, or ABTWRNDBGF.

How do we know it’s a BTWR? I met him one morning, trapped under the recycle bin on the back porch. The dogs had been sniffing around eagerly for some time while I was puttering near the wood shed. I heard a thump on the back porch, and when I came back a while later I found a creature trapped under the corner of the plastic recycle bin. I guess the dogs had knocked the bin down on it while chasing it around. The animal wasn’t hurt, but it couldn’t move; its Disney-cute head looked around from under one side of the box while its long furry tail waggled from under the other. I let him go thinking he would scamper back into the woods, but no dice. An hour later I saw him running back and forth on the top rail of the wood shed. Towards lunchtime he had disappeared from there and the dogs were sniffing around the boards and accumulated tools in the corner of the wood shed; but maybe I was making too much noise in my struggles to put up the shed roof because the dogs then took up their post at the BGF. And there, a few days later, Jessica found a nest in the engine.

She had opened the hood to see what the dogs were so eager to get at. They were spending every spare moment around and under the BGF, and Honey would even wedge her upper body in above the tire so as to sniff more closely at the engine. When Jess opened the hood the rat scurried away, and she found a large nest in the engine. She had heard that some rodents dine on plastic hoses and engine parts and we can’t afford to have our transportation become rodent food, so she put out rat poison. No dice. I opened the hood the next day and found a nest in the rebuilding stages. Well.

That’s life in the woods, I guess.