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True Stories by Steve Keely
Hobo Memoirs

12/6/2005
A Little Nugget from Bo Keely

The packrat standard is gold where I live. Seven-inches long (with tail), the half-dozen around my desert property trade trinkets and metals for foods such as pasta and nuts to carry and store in their burrows under my trailers. They never take anything without an exchange that is daily. however, sometimes they steal an item to trade for something else. I found my glasses and business card from the office in the pantry in the oatmeal. Each 3" diameter portal to a packrat burrow has a 3" thick plug of cactus spines, bright metals, nails, paper clips, etc. to block snakes and thieves. My neighbors, the Quick family, trail packrats to search for gold in the plug or burrow. Their successes are secret but ma Quick describes each track with a gleam in her eye. Likewise the packrats that I watch through the wire of my personal burrow reveal nothing. Humans covet gold and one day i'll look for a Fort Knox beyond the wire and in their holes. The packrats value nuts higher than anything.

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