lifewithrats

7 Quick Takes Friday

1. I’m already starting to dread tomorrow. My husband, J, is trying to make up a sick day he took this week, so he will have to work one day this weekend. He’s going to try to get Sunday off, but if they only give him Saturday, I might have to take care of Pidgin on my own. (She is being put down around eleven tomorrow morning.)

2. Ember, my spoiled girl, is the most nimble rat I’ve ever had. If you happen to hold her up in the air, she doesn’t flail about. She holds still until she has her balance, then deftly twirls until she’s righted and in a good position to jump. This all goes away, however, when you give her a good-sized piece of food. We once put a leftover bread bowl in for all four of the girls we had at the time. Ember grabbed the entire thing in her mouth and attempted to jump up to her ledge. Of course, since the bread bowl was bigger than her, she only managed to jump into the bread bowl. This didn’t faze her, and she went on eating while J and I laughed.

3. Her litter-mate, Poppy, is the exact opposite. It’s not that she’s very clumsy, but she certainly isn’t graceful. I’m not sure how the two of them are really sisters, since they are so different. Though they are both pretty small, Poppy has a few ounces on her sister. She’s bulky where Ember is lean, her fur is white to Ember’s silky black coat, and their personalities are quite different.

4. I’m watching a show on History Channel about the assassination of President Lincoln and subsequent manhunt for John Wilkes Booth. I’m thinking how fortunate it is that rats don’t have a sense of vengeance. Can you imagine if animals wanted to make up for the violence done to them by others (human and animal) with more violence? It’s enough that they fight for their food and lives, if they had to fight to make up for things…well, it wouldn’t be a pretty world. And imagine if animals could conspire!

5. Just for the record, I want people to know that ratteries (rat breeders) are not out to make a lot of money. Breeding rats is not a money-making venture so much as a chance to better the species. I feel like I’ve been explaining that lately, so now it’s on the record.

6. I will write about the food I feed my rats soon, probably tomorrow. I’m also going to come up with an ideal mix I want to make, and I’ll either blog about that, or come up with a plan to get to that point. As I said earlier, I would really like to use this blog as a motivation to get my rats on the best diet possible.

7. The worst rat bite I’ve had was by Suki, a mother rat I fostered. She’s the mother of Pidgin and Hedwig. When she was nursing, I made the mistake of getting my hand a little too close to the babies, and she thought I was a threat. She bit my pointer finger hard enough to bite through the nail. I was lucky not to lose the nail, but I was in quite a bit of pain for a few weeks. I learned a lesson about mother rats that day!

To post your own 7 Quick Takes (not necessarily about rats), visit Conversion Diaries at http://www.conversiondiary.com/2008/11/7-quick-takes-friday-vol-9.html.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS