A Very Industrious Rat Caught on Wildlife Camera in my Backyard

Something a little different today — and the answer to a mystery that had been quietly bothering me for ages.

For months, possibly years, I'd been waking up to find my back deck covered in sticks, twigs, and leaves. Every morning the same scene: a small but unmistakable scattering of garden debris, exactly where I hadn't left any. The trees overhead would explain a few leaves, but not the sticks, and not in those amounts. Something was bringing the material to the deck — quite deliberately, by the look of it.

I finally ordered an inexpensive infrared trail camera from Amazon — an Abask model, since discontinued — set it up looking at the deck, and waited.

The Culprit

The very first night caught my visitor in the act. A rat, scampering back and forth across the deck under the infrared light, carrying sticks and leaves in its mouth and stockpiling them in a particular corner. Industrious, focused, and completely uninterested in my presence as a watcher.

Here's the video compilation I put together from several nights of footage:

So, What Kind of Rat Does This?

Once I had video of the actual behaviour, the mystery had a much better chance of being solved — because, as it turns out, "rat that piles sticks and leaves in heaps" describes a very particular kind of rat. Most rats don't do this. The animal in my video is almost certainly a woodrat, also widely known as a pack rat.

Pack rats are native to North America, and they have a famous, almost obsessive habit of collecting things and arranging them into structures known as middens. They use sticks, twigs, leaves, grass, pebbles, and, given the chance, any small object they happen to fancy — coins, bottle caps, bits of foil, small tools, anything shiny. (There's a reason they're also called "trade rats": they'll drop one item to pick up a more interesting one.) The middens themselves are surprisingly elaborate. From the outside they look like a casual pile of sticks; on the inside they're tightly woven, multi-chambered structures with separate rooms for food storage, living quarters, and bolt-holes for escape. A bit like beaver lodges in miniature, except built by a creature about the size of a hamster.

In some dry American landscapes, abandoned middens have survived for thousands of years and are studied by paleoecologists as time capsules of local plant life. So my deck visitor isn't just engaging in a strange habit — it's practising one of the more remarkable construction behaviours in the rodent world.

Given my location in coastal southern California, the most likely specific species is the dusky-footed woodrat (Neotoma fuscipes), which is native to this part of the state and a known builder of large stick middens in suburban gardens and natural chaparral alike.

Living With the Architect

Knowing what the visitor is hasn't made me hate it any less when I'm out at six in the morning sweeping the deck. But it has changed how I think about it. The piles of sticks aren't random vandalism — they're an animal trying, night after night, to build itself a home using the materials at hand. I might prefer it built that home somewhere other than my deck. But there's a certain admiration involved, too. Whatever else can be said about my woodrat, it isn't lazy.

About the Trail Camera

For anyone curious about the camera setup: I used an inexpensive Abask infrared trail camera from Amazon, which is no longer sold there. The trail-camera market has come a long way since I bought mine — many current models offer wi-fi connectivity (which would save me the hassle of pulling the SD card every few days to retrieve the footage) and solar charging (which would be a real bonus, since mine eats through eight AA batteries in a single busy night). Any standard wildlife trail camera with infrared night vision will do the same job — there are plenty of options at every price point. Perhaps you could start here checking out this 4K 64MP Solar Trail Camera WiFi Bluetooth, but keep in mind it's not something I own so I can't recommend it, but it has a 4.5 star rating at Amazon. Over the years I have caught some very interesting wildlife activity in my backyard, including rats, possums, and even a bobcat! So think about having some fun yourself.