These nests are pyramidal, about 3 feet tall, all over in the woods around here. Woodrats are kinda nice critters, compared to disgusting Norwegian city rats. They’re like big mice, live communally, are craftily smart at getting bait off traps without springing the trigger. The ones around here are dusky-footed woodrats, often called “pack rats,” have white belies, and bigger ears and eyes than city rats.
They are herbivores and according to Andrew Santos:
“Their lodges are architectural marvels with many entrances and lookouts. Ans interior rooms that service nests And pantries. They generally live solo in a matriarchal society of several lodges, comprising neighborhoods. Nests can get 6 to 8 feet tall.”
–From Homegrown: A Year in the Life of a Humboldt County Guerrilla Grower
About Lloyd Kahn
Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the
Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include
Shelter,
Shelter II (1978),
Home Work (2004),
Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008),
Tiny Homes (2012), and
Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/Conenose-Kissing-Bugs.aspx
Woodrat nests and cone nose bugs go together. I have been bit by the bugs a few times. After the bug injected anesthetic wears off the swelling and painfully astounding itch emerges and persists for days. I live near an old growth manzanita stand that shelters the charming rodents. https://www.americanforests.org/big-trees/big-manzanita-arctostaphylos-manzanita/