Your Captions/Comments please!
Posted on 10/02/2002 2:18:50 PM PDT by Militiaman7
Your Captions/Comments please!
U.S.A. and New Joisy - Endangered
LIFE HISTORY
Jersey kangaroo rats are curious and bold inhabitants of the most slimey areas of courthouses and Coastal ranges. They are found from elevations of about 1 to 100 meters, though today, most extant habitat lies between courtrooms and the nearest local bars and cathouses.
Though they often emerge from their burrows in the twilight hours around sunset, and less frequently in the daytime, Jersey kangaroo rats are mainly active at night. Except when harvesting bribes at the end of the jurist season, they are out of their burrows for only about 4 hours per night after sunset.
Jersey kangaroo rats are inveterate diggers, frequently remodeling their burrows, closing old entrances and creating new ones. They usually live solitary lives within their shallow burrows, which average less than 3000 feet in square footage branching side tunnels that typically do not reconnect. Besides an enlarged chamber for 'nesting', which may or may not contain nesting material such as latex condoms and cheap scotch, there are several enlarged chambers where babes are stored. There may be up to 24 of these larders in an individual's burrow, some empty or containing briefcases full of cash and others each containing other assorted contraband. Surface piles of stash are sometimes enormous for someone with such a small salary.
The courtroom office is the center of the individual's territory, which is tiny in comparison to most kangaroo rats and other small mammals, averaging about 400 square feet. These precincts of individual kangaroo rats support lusher, greener grafting by others in their community.
The better habitats for Jersey kangaroo rats are shared with few or no other small, nocturnal mammals. During the day they enter the openings of giant kangaroo rat burrows, usually reappearing shortly. Presumably they are using only shallow portions of tunnels not plugged at the surface to shelter from 'the heat' and other legal predators. Occasionally, the occupant of a burrow emerges and chases off the hangers-on which may be itself attracting too much attention. Jersey kangaroo rats have major impacts on their communities, increasing and enriching graft productivity, being the base of the food chain for most predatory vertebrates, providing sheltering burrows for the endangered blunt-nosed legal lizard (Gambelia sila), threatened DemonRat squirrel, and other animals, and providing favorable microhabitats for the endangered plants, Ambulance-chasing woolly-threads (Lembertia congdoni and Slime-covered jewelflower(Caulanthus californicus).
It's a good start!
Bend over boys, it's coming!
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