Lumber Rats. - [Fearsome Critter]

Lumber Rats (& Mice) - [Fearsome Critter] - (Latin: "Rattus Magnus.") - aka: "Dire rats", "Wolf rats", "Bunyan Rats", "Western Pack-rats." "Trained Pack Rats"

• About This Critter: Initially ordinary sized Wood Rats (and Mice) which fed on the crumbs of the buffalo-milk pancakes at Ol' Pauls cook shanties, soon grew as large as young bears! The rats increase in size also increased their appetite & overall desperation for food. (Every so often a lumberman's bones would show up picked clean in the woods.) - These pests soon outnumbered and scared off all the wolves in Dakota! - Eventually Paul had the bright idea to make some of these varmints work for him, by breeding and training a few of them as "pack-rats" achieved by "Twisting their Tails" eventually; they where bred in mass and used to haul heavy redwood logs by the lesser axe men...

• Origin & Early appearances: Tall tales of Paul Bunyan training 'giant rodents' are fairly wide spread, as such the type of rodent changes depending who/where you're asking; there are of course "Empire Squirrels" and also the far more vicious "Camp Chipmunks" as mentioned in "Paul bunyan natural history" an early bunyan-critter bestiary by [Charles E Brown, 1935] -the rats do get an earlier mention as a foot note in W.B.Laughead's Red Lumber Company Pamphlets ["Marvelous exploits of paul bunyan 1922"] where it's said that

"It took a good dog to kill the rats and mice in Paul's camps for the rodents picked up scraps of the buffalo milk pancakes and grew to be as big as two year old bears!"

- and how!  The giant rats also feature in a few sight-seeing paths in carvings on the 'Tall Tale Trail' at Kalamath California's "TREES OF MYSTERY!" –

[Vintage 1950s postcard of a carving featuring lumbermen riding on giant a wood-rat (& squirrels) from the 'tall tale trail' at Kalamath Californias "TREES OF MYSTERY"] - The back side of the postcard says the following: 

"Paul Bunyan bred and trained our western pack rats for logging by twisting their tails.  – TRAIL OF TALL TALES – Stories of Paul Bunyan hand carved in gigantic redwood by 'Ben Kaiser'  a sculptor with a chainsaw at the TREES OF MYSTERY RED WOOD HIGHWAY CALIFORNIA.

• Note: that 'Ben Kaiser' seems to be a misnomer/typo; the actual sculptor is known as "Kenyon Kaiser" who sculpted more than 50 statues for the park in a 10 year period! He's known in lumbering circles as one of the first Americans to start doing chainsaw carving as an wood-form art! Some of his statues which still stand today: More about that and the 'Trees of mystery' on their website & you can also go for a tour in this old video.

[Art Sticker by Samkalensky part of my fearsome critters collection of stickers, follow and support for many more!]