Tennessee’s eastern woodrat records concentrate in the forested mountains of the far east, around Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cherokee National Forest, and Roan Mountain State Park, where rocky bluffs, downed timber, and dense understory give this pack rat the cover it needs to build and defend a den.
An eastern woodrat builds a house, not just a burrow: a mound of sticks, leaves, bark, bones, and whatever else it finds, packed against a log, rock, or root mass, or wedged into a crevice in bluff country. It feeds mostly on nuts, acorns, seeds, and buds, carrying food back to the den rather than eating in the open, and it’s active mostly at night though it sometimes turns up around dawn and dusk.
Reports are modest, just 50 Tennessee records, and they peak in April and November rather than midsummer. That likely tracks when the animal is moving between seasonal food sources and when observers are out looking, not a sign the population shifts twice a year. NatureServe hasn’t assigned Tennessee a numeric rank for the species.
Full species profile
