I’m near the aquarium, close to Pike Fish Market area. It was dark and I saw a rodent like creature scurry across my path into some bushes. It could have been a rat, it was the same size and configuration, but I noticed it didn’t have a rat like tail, and in fact didnt seem to have a tail at all…or it had a very small tail. It also seemed ‘stockier’, and more fat/round than elongated like I would expect a rat. It happened so fast and I didn’t get a good look at it, but it almost looked like a lagomorph of some kind, but was probably a rodent.
Any ideas, so I can impress my friends with my knowledge of the local fauna?
it could have, of course. But if there is another creature (vole?) that fits that description without having to lose its tail, than that might be a better bet. I see that Seattle is the 7th worse city for rat infestation, so that is still a primary suspect.
But I wondered if there was some other critter I wasn’t familiar with in this area.
Nutria are also, via escape, common in the Pacific Northwest — I saw them from time to time in the Willamette valley, and they’re apparently in some parts of Lake Washington. They’re stocky, round, rat-like creatures without so prominent a tail. Might it have been one of those?
Offhand, I can’t think of any small animal that would be more likely in a city than a domestic rat lacking a tail.
Although voles have shorter tails than rats, they wouldn’t look tailless, nor would they be likely in a city downtown area.
The so-calledMountain Beaver or Sewellel lives in the Pacific Northwest and is virtually tailless, but it lives in forests. You would never see one in a large city.
