Wood rats range over most of North America. They exhibit great variation, especially in the southwestern United States. The bushy-tailed species occurs in the western United States and Canada. Wood rats are notorious for invading buildings in the mountains and in the desert. However, their natural habitat is broken rock or talus. This habitat preference accounts for their distribution in Washington, for talus is common except in the humid subdivision of the Transition Life-zone. Wood rats are probably most abundant in the talus slides of the Columbian Plateau, especially in the canyon of the Columbia River and in Moses and Grand coulees. They are common in all the mountainous areas in the state where high altitudes and steep slopes result in the accumulation of talus. Wood rats range from sea level to 10,000 feet elevation on Mount Rainier and from the Upper Sonoran to the Arctic-alpine life-zones. Great horned owls and probably all of the carnivores that share the range of the wood rat prey on it to some extent. Sperry (1941: 15) lists _Neotoma_ in four per cent of 8,339 coyote stomachs gathered throughout the United States. Wood rats in Washington are definitely nocturnal and are rarely seen in daylight. On January 10, 1939, however, near Colville, Stevens County, a companion and I were sitting on the porch of a deserted shack eating lunch. Suddenly a wood rat darted out of the open door into the full sunlight and tugged at a can, containing a few drops of tomato juice, which one of us was holding in his hand. When the rat looked up and saw the human, it hastily retreated. The wood rat has a habit of flattening its body tightly against the ground when observed and also of "drumming" with its feet when excited. This habit is shared by the snowshoe rabbit and the spotted skunk. A captive specimen "drummed" by lifting its back feet, alternately, about one-half inch from the surface of a piece of wood and striking downward with surprising power. The agility of the wood rat was demonstrated near Wallula where we watched a specimen by the light of a flashlight as it climbed an almost vertical rock wall, taking advantage of small fractures for toe-holds. Wood rats are far from noiseless in their nocturnal activities. Near Moses Coulee, Douglas County, wood rats were heard from a distance of 50 feet as they scampered back and forth through a concrete culvert under the highway.