Neotoma cinerea

There is quite a story behind this rat in a box.

Several days ago, strange droppings appear overnight on the floor of the dining tent. Three days later, the pooper makes itself known in the afternoon-a Bushy-Tailed Wood Rat. (I had to look him up in the field guide to figure out what he was.) After two more days of (ever-increasing) scat-attacks on the dining tent, my manager declares the rat needs to die. I have come to love this rat; I cannot let him perish. I promise to relocate him to Bug Dome, a large granite dome across the meadow surrounded at its base by a field of talus-the wood rat's natural home. Cut to a week later, when I walk into the stockroom and find my manager decked out in heavy-duty rubber gloves and respirator mask, armed with a makeshift weapon: a steak knife duct-taped to the end of a wooden stick. He means to slay the rat. Luckily his nerves have failed him long enough for me to intervene, finagle the rat into a cardboard box, and carry him the quarter-mile to Bug Dome. Pictured is the moment of his reintroduction into the wild.

I named him Icarus, for he flew too close to the Sun...(rise High Sierra Camp).