It is daytime in the Mojave Desert. It is very hot. A kangaroo rat rests inside his burrow. A burrow is a hole in the ground. He dug the hole.

He dug tunnels around the hole.

It is cool in the burrow. The kangaroo rat waits. He will go out at night.

At night it is cool.

He leaves his burrow as the moon rises in the night sky. His back legs are very large and powerful. They support his whole body. He hops out into the night like a tiny kangaroo.

The kangaroo rat hops off in search of seeds. Seeds are his main source of food. The seeds in the Mojave Desert are very small. He stuffs hundreds of them in his cheek pouches. This is how he carries the seeds home. Back at home, the rat uses his front paws to push the seeds out of his mouth. Then he covers them with sand.

The kangaroo rat may sleep most of the day. But he has very good hearing. If he hears a small noise, he’ll jump up, wide awake. Tonight he hears a small scraping noise. He sniffs the air. It’s a snake! If the snake comes inside his burrow, the rat will be trapped. He goes outside to try to chase the snake away.

It’s a gopher snake. The kangaroo rat warns the snake by stomping his foot. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Nope, that’s not working. Time to try throwing sand. The kangaroo rat uses his strong hind legs to kick sand in the snake’s face. Sand in the eyes hurts. The snake doesn’t like that at all. The snake slithers away and the kangaroo rat is safe for another day. Time to go back to his burrow and eat his buried seeds.