I was searching through my photo archives, and found this pic of Summer, one of my rattie girls from a year ago. I thought you might get a kick out of it. Not many people get to see a rat with a plastic collar and a leg cast on. Rest assured she recovered completely, and is right as rain today. Oh, and the red discharge on her nose is porphryn, not blood. It's produced by stress, sometimes.
The most I have had at one time was four females. Summer and Lenore are the only two living now. I lost Luna last week, and Sassy about a month ago, both due to complications with old age. Summer is an ollld lady. Thank you for the kind words about her. I love rats and mice; they are my favorite rodents. I've kept both as pets.
The only male rodent I've ever owned was old Atlas, who was a rescue. He was a MEAN son of a bitch at first, but with trust-building exercises, he came around. At the beginning, we had to handle him with leather gloves. This is during the last week of his life. All he wanted was me to snug with him.
Oh my god thay are soooo aamazingly beautiful! And I once had a Luna too. Now I have 2 females, Bodhi (the one at the bottom of my sig pic) and Rocket (the one in the middle of the sig pic). But Rocket is like 3 and has a lot of cancer...I'm sad about it, but that is life I suppose. But they are just such amazing animals.
Aww, your babies are cute! Rats are seriously beautiful. As for Summer's leg, the whole thing was a clusterfuck. One night, she and Sassy were playing, and Sassy accidentally scratched Summer's eye, ulcerating her cornea. I rushed Summer to emergency (because this stuff always happens at like 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday), and they gave her the collar and some meds for her eye. We went home, I medicated her, put her in a quarantine tank and went to sleep. The collar was on securely. In the morning, Summer had not only gotten her collar off, but she had chewed up her leg for some reason. Bad enough to require staples. Back to emergency she goes! They stapled her leg, casted it (she was so pathetic moving around) and fitted her collar with that green tape to make a more snug fit. So, she was on pain meds for her leg, and cream for her eye. Her leg healed, her eye healed, and once her collar came off, she pulled almost all of the fur off of her face. I had her checked for mites, made sure her food didn't have too much protein to cause skin/coat issues.... she wasn't itchy, she just pulled her fur off. She didn't even appear to be stressed or uncomfortable! BACK on went the collar, and once she had some face fuzz, it came off again, and her fur grew back, and all was well. I was worried I would lose her, but this all happened a year ago, and we have been fine with no other issues (knock on wood.) She is a character, I will tell you. <3
