Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie.
Speaker 1: I just recently returned from a trip out west, out
Speaker 1: into the deserts of Arizona. And while I was there,
Speaker 1: my wife and I visited the Desert Museum, which I
Speaker 1: highly recommend anyone visiting Arizona there they go check that
Speaker 1: out because it's it's not really a museum, it's more
Speaker 1: of a botanical garden with some animals living in it,
Speaker 1: and uh, it really opens your eyes to how diverse
Speaker 1: a desert ecosystem actually is, how much life is there,
Speaker 1: even if it is life that is thriving on a
Speaker 1: on a smaller level. You know, so many amazing varieties
Speaker 1: of CACTI got to see alive have Alina for the
Speaker 1: first time, which was which was on my list of
Speaker 1: things to do. But then I also learned for the
Speaker 1: first time that a pack rat is an act will
Speaker 1: than well. I I just kind of assume prior to
Speaker 1: this that when people said, oh, he's a pack right,
Speaker 1: he's a pack rat, that maybe we were referring to
Speaker 1: some vague, um myth or legend that rats like to
Speaker 1: collect items and store them somewhere. I had no idea.
Speaker 1: I have to admit that it was an actual creature. Yeah, yeah, actually, um,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that a lot of our listeners know this.
Speaker 1: Listeners in the Southwest, right, because apparently pack rats um
Speaker 1: are a bit of a pestilence, a bit of a
Speaker 1: problem and um or something that people try to get
Speaker 1: rid of because they like to take up residents in
Speaker 1: cars sometimes and and choot through the wiring or just
Speaker 1: get into the house. Yeah, they like to set up
Speaker 1: camp and as well discussing this this episode, they do
Speaker 1: collect objects. They like to use them to decorate their
Speaker 1: little homes and sometimes the often the objects they collect
Speaker 1: in an urban environment are not things you want them
Speaker 1: running off with, like parts to your vehicle, important parts
Speaker 1: or car keys or teeth. These kind of things can
Speaker 1: convantage We have pack rats in the area. They can
Speaker 1: be very destructive, but they are a very fascinating species,
Speaker 1: like deceptively fascinating and deceptively useful. So we decided we
Speaker 1: would we take the time to to consider the pack
Speaker 1: rat and to examine some of the things that make
Speaker 1: this an interesting species, which you know, the next time
Speaker 1: you look out at a desert vista, you should consider
Speaker 1: these guys and how elaborate they make their homes. But
Speaker 1: before we talk about this, let's talk about where they
Speaker 1: actually roam in a bit about what they look like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are presently twenty one living species of pack rat
Speaker 1: um or neatoma, occurring a wide rangement of habitats. You'll
Speaker 1: find them around the edge of the Arctic Circle, all
Speaker 1: the way the tropics of Nicaragua, throughout western Canada, most
Speaker 1: of the US Mexico, Central America, also known as trade
Speaker 1: rats or wood rats. Wherever they roam, though, they have
Speaker 1: two key requirements, right they need succulent plants for food
Speaker 1: and adequate shelter. And when I mean succulents, that of
Speaker 1: course mean cacti and tiny cacti and desert not delicious
Speaker 1: succulent not not just delicious foods. That they are cactus laughters.
Speaker 1: They depend on the cactus. That's where they get most,
Speaker 1: if not all, of their water. Like these guys are
Speaker 1: in their natural environment, They're not going to go search
Speaker 1: for a stream to lap up water. They're getting it
Speaker 1: exclusively from the cacti that they're chewing on. And I
Speaker 1: dare say that these guys are actually pretty cute and
Speaker 1: cuddly looking. Yeah, they look like little mice, like they're not.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what one expect they. I
Speaker 1: guess you'd expected to have little pockets and and like
Speaker 1: chains and jewelry and kind of look like Hoggle and
Speaker 1: Labyrinth or something. But I have like a little grocery cart. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a little grocery cart full of junk pushing along. But no,
Speaker 1: they kind of to the untrained eye, they look just
Speaker 1: like a mouse of some sort. Yeah. They have grayish
Speaker 1: brown fur with tawny undertones, white feet and undersides. They
Speaker 1: can be distinguished from their distant relative in no way
Speaker 1: rat by their blunt noses and long whiskers, and they
Speaker 1: usually measure anywhere from about eight inches long to fifteen
Speaker 1: inches long, depending on the species or the subspecies. Um.
Speaker 1: The tail is another five to seven inches, and wood
Speaker 1: rats tails are more furred than scaly, and they have
Speaker 1: so they don't have that that that possum rat tail
Speaker 1: where it's just like a naked, squirmy worm type thing.
Speaker 1: The most of the time you see that and you
Speaker 1: kind of recoil from it, but this is more of
Speaker 1: a furry tail and they have extraordinary large round ears. Again,
Speaker 1: this is what makes them, I guess, uh, we can
Speaker 1: put them in the cute category because of this. The
Speaker 1: tail is covered by loose skin which can be shed
Speaker 1: to escape or predator. That's that was really fascinating because
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like a lizard, right, except it's
Speaker 1: not shedding the entire tail. It's just shedding the skin
Speaker 1: off of it, which sounds horrifying as well, but certainly
Speaker 1: of an owl is coming after you better that he
Speaker 1: takes the skin off your tail than all of you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a nat trick, right, and the and the owl
Speaker 1: get something out of it as well, right, Thanks for
Speaker 1: the memories. Um so. Yeah. And they are usually solitary,
Speaker 1: although a bit we'll talk a little bit about more
Speaker 1: how they deviate from solitary confinement of their of themselves.
Speaker 1: What is interesting to the solitary because the idea of
Speaker 1: a pack rat is is we throw the term around
Speaker 1: in human environments is you often think of a person
Speaker 1: who lives alone and collects lots and lots of things.
Speaker 1: You're thinking hoarding territory, hoarding territory, which is a whole
Speaker 1: another podcast which we'll get to, but but much darker
Speaker 1: podcast than than what we're talking about here. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: these pack rats, um, they're not just trying to accumulate
Speaker 1: for accumulation's sake. There seems to be a couple of
Speaker 1: different things going on for the for the reasons why
Speaker 1: they are accumulating debris. But let's first talk about these
Speaker 1: guys as architects. So the big thing about the pack
Speaker 1: rat and the thing that fascinates us and and and
Speaker 1: ultimately the reason we're talking about them now is that
Speaker 1: they build little dens, little homes, And if you look
Speaker 1: at one of these houses, it kind of looks like
Speaker 1: a little dollhouse made out of sticks and garbage and
Speaker 1: just desert materials just cobbled together into this little home.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's really fascinating. And it's not just one
Speaker 1: of these things where we look at it and we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it looks like a little home with little rooms for
Speaker 1: different uses. They actually use the different rooms for different things.
Speaker 1: It's very intentional. Beginning with what you could call the
Speaker 1: front door. Uh, usually they will use stands of troll
Speaker 1: or prickly pear cacti Yeah, the whole thing is is
Speaker 1: surrounded with prickly cactus bits that serve as a barrier.
Speaker 1: And this is really interesting because, um, you have Native
Speaker 1: American tribes in the area that would depend on these
Speaker 1: living fences where they would take bits of cactus and
Speaker 1: sort of strap them together and make little fences out
Speaker 1: of the cacti. And the pack rat does the same
Speaker 1: thing and was doing the same thing long before humans
Speaker 1: occupied the area, right, So if a predator were to
Speaker 1: come to their nest, then it would be met by this,
Speaker 1: you know, cacti, which would not feel so great. And
Speaker 1: the pack rats actually cut them into three to four
Speaker 1: inch long pieces and carry them to their nest sites
Speaker 1: in their mouth. So if you see a stand of
Speaker 1: saprickly pair and you see little score marks on it,
Speaker 1: you can tell that a pack rat has been there. Um.
Speaker 1: So the cacti does serve both as a nest protector
Speaker 1: and as food and also provides some really good installation.
Speaker 1: The temperature inside of that that pack rat den is
Speaker 1: really stable and and it all comes from the installation. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the nest actually consists of two parts. There's the house,
Speaker 1: which is the collective material, which is mostly above ground,
Speaker 1: and then the nest itself, which is usually dug part
Speaker 1: way below grounds. So that's where we start to see
Speaker 1: these different chambers and these specialized areas for the pack
Speaker 1: rat to live in. Right, they'll have several rooms that
Speaker 1: are devoted to food storing food because ultimately, if you're
Speaker 1: a rodent and you're living it rough out there in
Speaker 1: the world, you're gonna want to store away some food,
Speaker 1: right to survive the lean tie. And they'll have as
Speaker 1: much as three bushels of plant material stored away in there.
Speaker 1: And then they have another area that is actually thought
Speaker 1: of as um We call it sometimes a daytime retreat,
Speaker 1: like a day room, which is very helpful during the
Speaker 1: more intensely heated summer months, right, But it's also used
Speaker 1: as a nursery sometimes, so it's like a bedroom slash
Speaker 1: nursery slash rump. This room, I guess, yeah, sort of
Speaker 1: like your guest room in your house perhaps is a
Speaker 1: multipurpose room. And then this is really interesting too. They
Speaker 1: have a latrine. And and now that sounds kind of
Speaker 1: like if you're like, oh man, why would you have
Speaker 1: you know, the latrine as part of your nest. But
Speaker 1: well that humans have a ladder into talk. Since we
Speaker 1: started doing indoor plumbing and moved our bathrooms inside, everyone
Speaker 1: has a room that is devoted almost entirely to pooping.
Speaker 1: So you may you may not think of it that way,
Speaker 1: but that's what you have. What do you think it
Speaker 1: would do to us psychologically if we just renamed restroom
Speaker 1: poop room everywhere wholesale? Yeah, like no matter where you went,
Speaker 1: and you just say I've got good of the pooper room, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would. I mean the thing that gets me, it's
Speaker 1: one thing to call the bathroom. Okay, so bathroom all right,
Speaker 1: called a bathroom because it has a bathroom there. All right,
Speaker 1: fair enough, You're gonna put the spotlight on the thing
Speaker 1: that's most relaxing and has less to do with our
Speaker 1: bodily functions, the restroom. Okay, Well you're going in there,
Speaker 1: you're well, you may be doing something RESTful, but it
Speaker 1: also there also might be a very stressful incidents going
Speaker 1: on inside that room. But what gets me is the
Speaker 1: water closet where it's where this is when you have
Speaker 1: have a room that only has a toilet in it,
Speaker 1: Like if anything is a pooper room, that's a pooper room.
Speaker 1: But we call it the water close. It's it's a
Speaker 1: magical little room that has a fountain and a waterfall
Speaker 1: in it. It does some kind of love the I'm
Speaker 1: going to the multa closet, you see, but that is
Speaker 1: essentially what the pack rad has, a water closet because
Speaker 1: again the pack rick doesn't want to go outside during
Speaker 1: this horrible heat and uh and use the restroom elsewhere.
Speaker 1: She needs an indoor potty and that's what this room is. Well,
Speaker 1: if she went outside too, she would be subject to
Speaker 1: the predation from like we said, owls, snakes, and coyotes.
Speaker 1: So this is another reason to have an indoor latrine um.
Speaker 1: And actually too, when they bring in some of their collectibles,
Speaker 1: they do bring it into the lutrine and the urinate
Speaker 1: on that, which creates a bit of a specimen that
Speaker 1: we'll talk about later on. That's very helpful to our
Speaker 1: understanding of the environment. I've I've heard it put that
Speaker 1: they'll bring in things to quote unquote decorate their house,
Speaker 1: and then as they tire of these decorations as they
Speaker 1: become old, or as we'll discuss a minute, when some
Speaker 1: of the elements that they used to decorate when they
Speaker 1: lose their functionality. They dumped them into the latrine room,
Speaker 1: so not everything goes directly to the traine room. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's like I'm kind of sick of that painting. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put it in the poop chamber. Well, and see again,
Speaker 1: this is very intentional, right, It's interesting that they would
Speaker 1: be decorating in quotes right their dens and having a
Speaker 1: sort of revolving artwork or installation that eventually gets put
Speaker 1: into what we call the midden. This is the area
Speaker 1: that they urinate on. And we'll talk more about the
Speaker 1: midden in a moment, but they also have been known
Speaker 1: to line their homes with leaves, yes, particularly bay leaves,
Speaker 1: you know, the type of leaf that you put in
Speaker 1: your spaghetti. Very aromatic, and you would think of this
Speaker 1: as a kind of wood rat potpourri or pack rat potpourri.
Speaker 1: You might think that at first, but it actually serves
Speaker 1: a far more important purpose, and that is to keep
Speaker 1: the pest down. It's basically they're fumigating the den, right,
Speaker 1: so they don't want ectoparasites hanging around, particularly where they sleep,
Speaker 1: so they line this area with those bay leaves, and
Speaker 1: that really acts as a repellent, which I thought was
Speaker 1: completely fascinating. So not only do you have artwork that
Speaker 1: is revolving, artwork that you know, disappears and goes into
Speaker 1: littering when they get tired of it, but you've got
Speaker 1: these nice fragrant bay leaves scenting the den. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: also found it interesting that sometimes they have roommates, like
Speaker 1: non rodent roommates such as box turtles, skinks, lizards, well know,
Speaker 1: sometimes other rodents, but which you also see with the
Speaker 1: with beavers as that recall, um, the other animal that
Speaker 1: is generally the beloved animal that that builds houses out
Speaker 1: of craft that it finds. Yeah, well, because the beaver
Speaker 1: is like, oh, then the beaver is we look at
Speaker 1: the beaver, is this uh, this industrious creature that's doing
Speaker 1: good in the world. But the pack rat is a
Speaker 1: past The pack rat is a destroyer, right, but they're
Speaker 1: basically doing their own thing that it's just to what
Speaker 1: extent they interfere with human plans. Well that's because beavers
Speaker 1: don't try to how wire your car. Yeah well yeah
Speaker 1: yet yet. Um so I found it interesting that the
Speaker 1: pack rats may have some other creatures living around, Like
Speaker 1: I mean, a pack rat that lives with the box turtle.
Speaker 1: That that's the reality show right there. That are a
Speaker 1: sitcom set up that I would watch. Yeah, um, and
Speaker 1: we have you know, said that they're primarily solitary, but
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is is that they are
Speaker 1: largely natural inning all these societies, and they live in
Speaker 1: a pretty loosely cooperative society. So when the pups are weaned,
Speaker 1: this is really interesting. Males babies, by the way, one
Speaker 1: to four babies, the males will actually leave the den
Speaker 1: and they will go off into the hinter lands, but
Speaker 1: the females will move to adjacent stick houses, remaining close
Speaker 1: to their mother. And then when the matriarch dies, one
Speaker 1: of her daughters actually will inherit the stick home and
Speaker 1: a single wood rat can um maintain this home for
Speaker 1: several generations, for the same family for decades and decades.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Now this this leads to an idea in
Speaker 1: my mind, what if you had Downton Abbey all pack
Speaker 1: rats already would be great? Like's Maggie h Maggie Smith?
Speaker 1: Is that her name? The dowurs on there right right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: As a pack rat, I think that would be great. Well,
Speaker 1: they would have an awesome art collection already, you know,
Speaker 1: that um again, another great idea for a show there.
Speaker 1: But you know what, this is all sort of pointing
Speaker 1: to this idea that pack rats aren't just collecting things.
Speaker 1: They are actually giving us a clue of how um,
Speaker 1: how the earth once was. And we can look at
Speaker 1: them not just as architects, but as archaeologists. And we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break, but when we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss this idea a bit more. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're back, and we are already inside the pack rats again.
Speaker 1: We've talked about their latrine room, the midden, where they
Speaker 1: urinate coviously on old bits of art and uh and
Speaker 1: uh and by which I mean bits of plant pollen,
Speaker 1: animal bones in more recent years, lots of human artifacts,
Speaker 1: pieces of cars. There's one story about the man's false
Speaker 1: teeth going missing, and they showed up in one of
Speaker 1: these dens, anything that catches their fancy, and they were
Speaker 1: gathering the stuff from a wide territory. Yeah, but a
Speaker 1: hundred mile radius is where they gather all of these
Speaker 1: different materials. And so when a pack rat urinates on
Speaker 1: its collections, the high calcium oxalate content of the urine
Speaker 1: helps to solidify and preserve the items in a hard,
Speaker 1: resinous or vitreous looking like material called midden. Yeah, their
Speaker 1: urine is very viscous too, just to throw that im
Speaker 1: engine in your mind. Yeah, and the midden kind of
Speaker 1: looks like peanut brittle. It's been described as at or
Speaker 1: chocolate bar filled with nuts. And there's even one account
Speaker 1: of um people who were seeking out the gold rush
Speaker 1: back in the eighteen hundreds, UM getting to a part
Speaker 1: of the landscape that they were traveling through UM and
Speaker 1: not having enough to eat and actually finding the midden
Speaker 1: and using nuts as a Yeah, they said it looked like, well,
Speaker 1: kind of like twistlers. I guess which I'm eating today
Speaker 1: because it's Halloweens were recording it. Yes, I guess you
Speaker 1: could say like a honey. Yeah, looking if I look
Speaker 1: on the package, Um, well no, I guess there're no
Speaker 1: ingredients on this. This is a fun size. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be surprised if the midden midden materials like
Speaker 1: ten percent. But but yeah, you've given a long enough
Speaker 1: time though, this stuff will actually will crystallize into something.
Speaker 1: It's almost like amber. And consider too that pack rats
Speaker 1: have been doing this for at least forty tho years
Speaker 1: we found midden material that's forty thou years old, So
Speaker 1: inadvertently in their garbage, they have preserved some fascinating pidbits
Speaker 1: about the history of the planet. Much like with archaeologist
Speaker 1: when you look at human settlements, if you can find
Speaker 1: where they're throwing away their garbage, gold mine, because that
Speaker 1: gives you this insight into their daily life. What were
Speaker 1: they eating, what were they using, what was their life
Speaker 1: consisting of outside of uh, you know, religious iconography and
Speaker 1: what have you. What was the what was their daily
Speaker 1: life consisting of? With the with the pack rat, although
Speaker 1: it's more of a more of an insight into past climates,
Speaker 1: especially in dry western North America. Yeah, and actually, previous
Speaker 1: to the nineteen sixties, when midden was discovered and it
Speaker 1: was discovered that you could actually strike archaeological gold here
Speaker 1: and use this to to look into the past, they
Speaker 1: weren't quite sure what some of the atmospheres or environments
Speaker 1: were during different eras. So in the nineteen sixties it
Speaker 1: was discovered that these deposits left in caves and crevices
Speaker 1: by pack rats contained these assemblages of fossil plants, and
Speaker 1: that's when they began to say, okay, um, we can
Speaker 1: look at this and we can figure out what's happening
Speaker 1: during these tens and tens of thousands of years UM. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, since numerous vegetation zones occur over relatively short
Speaker 1: distances in places like the Grand Canyon, the newly discovered
Speaker 1: pac rat middens became a really good tool for comparing
Speaker 1: the Pleistocene vegetation zones with modern ones. And they did
Speaker 1: this by using radiocarbon dating. Yeah, so they could look
Speaker 1: through all those layers and try to figure out what
Speaker 1: was going on when. And then in addition to that,
Speaker 1: the urine actually acted as a bactor aside, so the
Speaker 1: organic material was preserved really well. Now, when future generations
Speaker 1: look back, I can't help but think they'll be a
Speaker 1: gap though, the period during which cowboys ate all of
Speaker 1: the candied urine cakes that the that the pack rats
Speaker 1: left for them in their in their debts, a gap
Speaker 1: in the midden fossil record. Yeah. All you have to
Speaker 1: do is look through there, I'm sure evidence in the
Speaker 1: caves and their droppings to try to find out what
Speaker 1: was going on. Now, one a little bit about the
Speaker 1: pack rat that we neglected to mention earlier is that, Okay,
Speaker 1: you have an animal here that lives almost exclusively on cacti.
Speaker 1: It's just eating loads and loads of cactus and its
Speaker 1: skintting most of its water from the cactus. But there's
Speaker 1: several different toxic plants thrown in here as well. I
Speaker 1: mean you have the juniper, the stage brush, the UK.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of toxin in there, so that the
Speaker 1: animal has to be able to withstand a certain amount
Speaker 1: of toxin, but also interestingly enough sort of manage its
Speaker 1: diet depending on what the toxin levels are. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is interesting. Some species or subspecies have actually evolved
Speaker 1: their their kidneys to be able to excrete some of
Speaker 1: the toxins out really well. But what we're talking about
Speaker 1: specifically here are food rats in the deserts of the
Speaker 1: US and the Southwest, where again there's very few food
Speaker 1: resources and you can't really be picky about what's available.
Speaker 1: So they have found, they were found, but they have developed,
Speaker 1: i should say, methods of dealing with this rather toxic appetite.
Speaker 1: They'll sample a number of different toxic items so they're
Speaker 1: not just chowneling down on one thing and potentially getting
Speaker 1: an overload of one particular toxin. They're eating smaller meals,
Speaker 1: which is kind of you know, as humans, we can
Speaker 1: understand that if the food is horrible, you eat less
Speaker 1: of it. They'll increase the time between meals, which makes
Speaker 1: sense too, because there's something toxic in there, you want
Speaker 1: to let your body work through it a little bit
Speaker 1: before you hit it again. And then if water is
Speaker 1: available again they get most of their water through cacti,
Speaker 1: but if there is a water source available, then they
Speaker 1: will drink more water to help compensate for the toxins,
Speaker 1: to try to flush it out. Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like some like college kids, I guess on a on
Speaker 1: a weekend, you know, drink more water, watch what you eat,
Speaker 1: and and make sure you recharge between toxic excess. Now,
Speaker 1: biology Professor Denise Deering actually compared wood rats or pack
Speaker 1: rats that eat only a single plant, and these are
Speaker 1: called specialists, these these wood rats, and so they would
Speaker 1: eat something like juniper and that wasn't a big deal
Speaker 1: for them because again that their kidneys in their livers
Speaker 1: had evolved enzymes that could break this down. But what
Speaker 1: you're talking about are those generalists, those wood rats. And
Speaker 1: that's where she discovered that they had these different behavioral
Speaker 1: responses in place to try to manage the amount of
Speaker 1: toxins in their bloodstream, which so it's actually pretty clever
Speaker 1: because you think about it, they get the sustenance, but
Speaker 1: they don't keel over with a belly full of poison. Um.
Speaker 1: They get to manage that process. And so she said
Speaker 1: that there's a possibility that they have a sort of
Speaker 1: poison detection system in place. So the generalists are they're
Speaker 1: they're more smart in their management of toxic diet, whereas
Speaker 1: the the specialists are just hardy. They're kind of like
Speaker 1: the Shane mcgallan's of the rodent world, where they could
Speaker 1: they just have a higher tolerance. Well, they just keep
Speaker 1: hitting that one plan over and over again. So it
Speaker 1: makes sense that they would evolve to be able to
Speaker 1: deal with it. Um. But Deering actually says that other
Speaker 1: researchers have found receptors in the guts of other rodents,
Speaker 1: and she thinks that rodents um, particularly the wood rats,
Speaker 1: may be able to detect bitter taste in their gut receptors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so should they eat it and then their figures out
Speaker 1: what's going on, and then then they get the signal
Speaker 1: we need to drink some water, We need to space
Speaker 1: things out exactly, or let's just not eat a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of this. Let's not gorge on this because you
Speaker 1: know this is toxic. So that's pretty fascinating getting a
Speaker 1: similar thing in my own stomach from the twistle and
Speaker 1: the twist at this point. Yeah, alright, So there there,
Speaker 1: that's the pack rat for you. Again. I'm sure a
Speaker 1: number of you, you guys and gals out there live
Speaker 1: in areas with the pack rat rooms. You may have
Speaker 1: some crazy pack rat stories that have either been handed
Speaker 1: down to you or that you've you've encounted yourself. We
Speaker 1: would love to hear about those, so be sure to
Speaker 1: write in with with those tales. And again, if you
Speaker 1: head out to Arizona spending any time between Phoenix and Tucson,
Speaker 1: go check out the Desert Museum. It's really fascinating. You'll
Speaker 1: learn a lot of stuff, uh, and you get a
Speaker 1: lot of walking and hiking done as well, and you
Speaker 1: get to see you have Alina, which which is a
Speaker 1: treat which is not a pig really more kin to
Speaker 1: a guinea any pig type of creature. But but it
Speaker 1: looks kind of I guess did you ride one. I
Speaker 1: did not write one. They're they're vicious. They will they'll
Speaker 1: tusk you man. But yeah, so go check that out.
Speaker 1: Anyone out there listening to us, if you would like
Speaker 1: to share any of your tales with us about the
Speaker 1: pack Rat, or if you want to talk about any
Speaker 1: other episodes we've done in the past, you can find
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