The Mexican woodrat is a fairly widespread rock-dweller in Colorado. Open occurrence databases hold 647 records for it here, most of them from museum and survey collections rather than photographs, since the animal is nocturnal and keeps to broken, rocky ground.
Cliffs, crevices, and pinyon slopes
Unlike its lowland desert cousins, this woodrat favors cooler rocky terrain: cliff faces, talus, canyon walls, and pinyon-juniper and conifer slopes from the foothills up into the montane forest. That kind of ground runs the length of the state’s mountain flank, so records span the northern Front Range in Larimer and Boulder counties and the southern canyon country of Las Animas and Montezuma. Wherever the rock is broken and the slopes are wooded, the Mexican woodrat is likely to be present.
A woodrat that skips the stick house
This species is unusual among pack rats for often doing without a big stick lodge. Where rock crevices, shelters, and small caves are on offer it simply dens inside them, so its presence is easy to overlook. It is a nocturnal vegetarian that caches leaves and plant matter in sheltered nooks, and its numbers climb into the record through the warmer months as the high rocky country becomes easier to reach.
Status in Colorado
NatureServe ranks the Mexican woodrat S4, apparently secure, in Colorado, the most stable of the state’s several woodrats and the one most likely to be met on a rocky mountain slope.
Full species profile
