In September of ‘08 I brought home two little rat sisters, one of them picked out because of the stripe on her face.  I have a weak spot for striped faced rats.

We named her Nibbitz.

She was a TEENIE little thing when I first broght her home, just a slight handful, and afraid of the whole world.

She did grow up to be a strapping young rat woman though.  And lived a happy life with her sister One of Two, and their catemates.

Sadly, the last week of April 2010 we lost our dear girl.  She’s got her wings now and is flying with all the dear rats I’ve known before her.

I’m happy to read in my comments today that more people were horrified at the woman who flushed the rat down her toilet.

I sometimes forget that a lot of people, even people who love fancy pet rats, think of wild rats as nasty sewer living creatures.  I forget that not everyone feel like I do, that wild rats are just as adorable, and just as deserving of love as their domesticated cousins.

Remember this one:

She was an injured wild rat my MIL found in her yard.  We took her in and tried to save her.  Her back end was paralized and I intended to let her go if she regained use, or keep her forever if she didn’t.  She was a wild animal, but never even tried to nip at us as we tried to help her.

To me she is every bit as cute as Nibbitz and One of Two playing in the bathroom.

Now I’m not advocating letting wild rats run rampant in your home.  Even I dont want them living in my walls where they can chew wires and cause major damage. 

However, I cannot think of someone flushing a rat down a toilet without it making my blood boil.  So does the idea of people using glue traps, which is a slow, painful horrific way for rats to die.  Imagine your body beign stuck to the groud while you slowly die of thirst and hunger.  That is AFTER trying to chew your own body parts off in an effort to escape what has you pinned down.

In a perfect world everyone would use a live trap to catch a release.  In a slightly less perfect world everyone would use snap traps that kill instantly MOST (sadly not always) of the time.

Um…what was I talking about again?

Oh yeah, rats are cute……even wild ones…..please don’t flush them down your toilet.

If someone were to do this to a puppy or kitten it would be considered animal cruelty. Why not for rats?

A Winston-Salem woman used a plunger and an empty container of kitty litter to wrangle a rat back into her toilet before flushing it.

In this video she says, “I was as scared of it as it was of me.”

Somehow I doubt that. I mean, what is so scary about a tiny little rat? Can you imagine how the poor rat felt having a giant after it.

And, yes rats can swim up into your toilet though sewers, but flushing it back down would be like taking your average person and dropping them in Grade 6 white water rapids.

How sad is it that one rat sighted warrents the closing of an entire school!

I mean, do the parents really feel like a rat is going to decend from the air vents and attack their children?

Read more about it:

Rat sighting closes Saugus school, again

I have a new baby who is taking up most of my time now.  My poor rats must be very patient.

It looks like the baby is keeping Francis awake like he is me though.  See, she didn’t even make it INTO the box before she fell asleep.

I’ve complained often how hard it is to find cute rat and mouse “stuff”.  Well, I can usually find things online, but I’ve pretty much never just walked into a random store and saw a cute rat or mouse thing that I just had to have.

Halloween always gets me in a tizzy at work, going through all our halloween decorations, trying to find a rat in there somewhere.

Sadly, when I do find rats they are usually skeezy rats, not cute ones.

Well, yesterday I was flipping through some gel clings at work.  Skull.  Bat.  Pumpkin, cat, mouse, skull, bat.

WAIT!  Did I just see a mouse?

I did see a mouse.  I found 2 of them actually.  And they are even cute in their own way.  Not adorable cute, but not skeezy at all.  I just HAD to buy them.

They were only $1 a piece, and with my employee discount I got them both for $1.61.

I had no idea where I was going to stick them, since I don’t have any glass in the rat room, and was worried that if I stuck them to the wall they might damage the paint.

Well, before I had left work yesterday I had decided they are going to live in my bedroom with me.  Two cute mice living on my bedroom mirror.

Remember me posting a couple of days ago about a new species of rat being discovered?

The Giant Wooly Rat, or Bosavi wooly rat, was discovered in an unexplored crater in New Guinea.

Well, now there is video of this rat, at night, in its natural habitat.

What I want to point out is around 1:27 in the film.  The people are PETTING this wild rat, scratching it like a pet.  Remember, this is a WILD rat, it is a GIANT rat as large as your average housecat, it has no fear of humans, and yet its letting itself be scratched.

More proof that rats are not vicious evil little demons.

“Scientists have now levitated mice using magnetic fields.

The researchers first levitated a young mouse, just three-week-old and weighing 10 grams. It appeared agitated and disoriented, seemingly trying to hold on to something.

“It actually kicked around and started to spin, and without friction, it could spin faster and faster, and we think that made it even more disoriented,” said researcher Yuanming Liu, a physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. They decided to mildly sedate the next mouse they levitated, which seemed content with floating. “

READ MORE HERE

The Bosavi woolly rat had no fear of humans when it was discovered.

Click here to listen to Naturalist Steve Backshall on the exploration of a lost world in a crater in Papua New Guinea, containing 40 undiscovered species.

Well, it should be well known that if I had the time, space, and finances I would start my own rat rescue.  I love the little critters, and want them all to have happy forever homes.

Well, I don’t have the time, space or finances for a rat rescue.  I have the space for one big cage, the time to clean that one cage regularly and to spend time with the rats living in it and the finances to keep them well fed and in clean bedding.

But, I just can’t say no.

My cousin called me last night, asking if I still had my rats.  I told him yes, I have three right now.  He asked if I wanted another one.

Me, want another rat?  Thats like asking a random stranger if they want a $100 bill, no strings attached.  Of course I want another rat.

Turns out his girlfriend has 3 rats.  2 hairless boys and one “fancy” female.  He said he thinks she wants to rehome the female.

Well, it just so happens that I have room for ONE more rat.  Exactly ONE more rat.  Their cage can hold 4 comfortably.

So, I told him I could take the female rat.

Here she is (a pic he sent me):

Her said her name is Madame Curie.  And I don’t know WHEN I might actually get her, since we live in different cities,and I don’t visit there too much, and he doesn’t visit here as often since he doesn’t work here anymore.

I MIGHT get to go visit home around the 12th and 13th of September, which I could arrange to take a travel cage with me and bring her home.

That is IF his girlfriend does decide to re-home her with me.