Meet Florida’s Most Adorable Rodent and the Superfans Determined to Save It

Cove wanted to study big cats in exotic places. He was able to get a rat. A rat is not just any rat, it is the leading character in an ongoing drama full of unexpected dangers and victories, with an unlikely supporting cast of retirees going rogue.

The Key Largo woodrats are one of the most rare and vulnerable rodents in the world due to habitat loss. Cove says they are also tragically misinterpreted.

Cove says that whenever he tells someone he studies woodrats, all they hear is the rat part. Black rats are so distantly related to woodrats that they are called tigers. They should have been called giant wood mice. There is a giant mouse.

The Key Largo woodrats (Neotoma floridana smalli) are 10 times the mass of the average field mouse and about a foot long. Their nest is six feet tall and four feet wide and is made of thousands of sticks. There are separate chambers for nurseries, latrines, and seed cache in these huge homes.

A ready source of food for birds, native snakes, and other predator species can be found in the insulated microclimate habitats created by the nested structures. The forest floor is nourished like a compost pile when the nest breaks down. Cove has studied the woodrats for a decade and found that they are a keystone species.

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Cove discovered a dozen new species ofbacteria that may be useful for the development of new antibiotics. Cove says that the next cure for cancer is found in some species of plant in the Amazon. In Key Largo, there is something similar to that.

Key Largo woodrats are found on the northernmost part of the island. The majority of their territory is in the Crocodile Lake National Wildlife refuge. The area used to have a lot of woodrat stick nest, but it was cleared out for pineapple plantations and later residential and commercial development. Woodrat numbers continued to fall despite being protected from extinction. There were no stick nest to be found by 2004.

The DeGayner brothers found their calling through a series of unforeseen events. There was a comment made by the refuge manager that led to the brothers searching for a rare animal.

The refuge manager said that he wouldn't see a woodrat. Was he right?

The brothers didn't find anything when they ventured into the forest. As they got to know the landscape, they began to notice the meager stick nest under the garbage. The brothers dragged in more of the junk because it was encouraging. Plastic culverts covered with limestone were installed on their own. Over time, they built more than a thousand of them.

Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park established a captive breeding program in hopes of stabilizing the population. There was no end to the story. Thirty-three of the 40 rats released into the wild died. The mystery of what was pushing them to extinction was solved by the discovery of dozens of tracking collar buried with entrails. The boas haven't been seen on Key Largo in a long time. The cat population exploded when they weren't around.

The DeGayner brothers began trapping cats and taking them to shelters. The brothers couldn't get the government to support a bigger program. When the former manager of the Croc Lake refuge retired, the position went unfilled for a long time. Cove claims that by the time he showed up in 2012 they were unofficially running the show.

The volunteers had keys to the office and were trapping cats. The people with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were worried. Someone should tell them to stop, that's what they were saying.

Cove was sent to Croc Lake to see if it was good or bad that the two retired hot tub salesmen from Michigan were outside. The DeGayners were doing a good job. Excellent.

"Because of their efforts, the Key Largo woodrat is still around for future generations to learn about and enjoy," says the current Croc Lake manager.

The brothers believed that the most immediate threat to the woodrats was from the cats. Woodrats stopped building their palatial nest because they stopped dragging the heavy sticks through the forest, according to his work. The management plan was supported by the data. To be returned to their owners, the animals were taken to shelters. The approach caused a public uproar.

Cove says that they received more comments than they did about the re-introduction of wolves to the area. Everyone was scared. people just lost it

Angry citizens threatened the DeGayners and others. Clay DeGayner said that they didn't kill Fluffy. People who love cats don't understand how miserable a cat's existence can be. It is very hard to educate them.

Today's effort to win people over is mostly done byDixon. The Ocean Reef Club is a gated community that is close to the refuge.

Ocean Reef now runs Florida's largest trap-neuter-release cat colony, as well as maintaining more than 50 feeding stations, and sequestering problem wanderers in a permanent enclosure. Science has shown that feeding cats doesn't change their appetite for killing animals. The high public profile of the colony has resulted in irresponsible pet owners dumping their cats in the area.

Reducing the cat population helped the woodrats. They started piling sticks on top of the supplemental nest. As the ecology came into balance, wild bird populations increased as well. The DeGayner brothers were happy to find woodrat mothers in their nest. Clay DeGayner said they are cute and gerbil-like. It's easy to be attached.

The reappearance of the woodrats drew the attention of Jane Goodall, who spent a morning with the brothers. Woodrat Town was once again called Key Largo. For a long time.

The victory was already bitter by the time Cove published their paper. Invasive pythons were spreading south and had reached the Keys. The snakes had devoured most of the small mammals in the area. The Key Largo woodrat couldn't win.

When asked about the stat that one-third of necropsied pythons in Key Largo now contain woodrats in their stomach contents, all the cheerful Cove could muster was, "That's a downer." He paused and looked for the words. It's the trend.

In addition to the woodrat, the Key Largo cotton mouse and other small mammals are at risk because of the search for pythons. The long-term survival of the Key Largo woodrat looks bleak due to climate change. He is working on ways to improve predator management and give Key Largo woodrats a chance. He says it will be difficult. The time is now for decisive action.