Washington’s Ord’s kangaroo rat record belongs to a single landscape, the sandy shrub-steppe of the Columbia Basin. It’s a short list, 16 records since 2000: Grant County holds 10, Franklin 3, and Benton and Spokane one apiece, and the Columbia Basin Wildlife Area Complex is the only named place with more than one.
Built for sand and drought
A kangaroo rat is a rodent rebuilt for the desert: enormous hind legs that carry it in long, erratic hops, fur-lined cheek pouches for hauling seed, and kidneys so efficient it can live its whole life without drinking. It digs its burrows in loose, sandy soil and plugs the entrances by day, exactly the country the Columbia Basin’s dunes and sagebrush flats provide.
Out on cool, dark nights
Kangaroo rats forage strictly at night, gathering seed into their pouches and caching it underground, and they cut their surface activity sharply on bright moonlit nights and in punishing heat, when exposure to owls and to the sun costs more than seed is worth. In the burrow they can slip into torpor to ride out cold snaps, letting them stay resident on the shrub-steppe through every season.
Status in Washington
NatureServe ranks Ord’s kangaroo rat S4, Apparently Secure, in Washington, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
