Thanks, everyone! It's weird not having him here... He was a very likable fellow. If friends came over and wanted to play with one of the ratties, he's always the one I'd take out of the cage. I buried him out in the back yard today. I want to get something to mark his grave with, any ideas?
I don't think I've shared his story before. Last summer, I got a PM from a 14 year old girl on Goosemoose. She lived 11 hours away from here, in a town called Soldotna in southern Alaska. A couple months earlier she had brought two girl rats home from the absolutely TERRIBLE pet store in town- at this pet store, the rats were blinded with really bright lights before being put in aquariums with pine bedding, no toys, and poor food. They were sold as snake food and not at all socialized. They were also kept with genders mixed.
Needless to say, the poor females were terrified of humans and one was pregnant. She gave birth to I think 7 babies, 5 boys and 2 girls. The girl decided to rehome the adult females and wanted to keep 3 of the very sweet boys. The other 2 boys and 2 girls were sent off in pairs to new homes. When the babies were about 3 months old, the girl's mother said she could only keep TWO of her 3 boys and if she didn't find somewhere for him to go, he would go to the terrible pet store!
I was one of two other Alaskans on the forum, and after talking it over with my boyfriend, we agreed to get him! We drove down to Anchorage last August for a wedding, and the next day made the 4 hours each way drive to Soldotna to get Colby Jack. He was trembling when she handed him to us, but was obviously well socialized and quickly became comfortable with us.
We took him home with him snuggled in my shirt part of the time and quarantined him from our 3 girls. He was neutered at the age of 4 months, and eventually moved in with the girls. He started out little, but grew to be a big boy and I was worried he would become obese, which is common in male rats but unhealthy. We were able to get his weight under control.
Coco (as I often called him) was a very sweet boy. His favorite thing to eat was cheese, but he would eat anything offered to him, grabbing it greedily from our fingers! He accidentally bit once, but it wasn't very hard and it was when I was holding a treat for him. Seeing as pink eyed rats like him are almost blind, my feelings weren't really hurt. He also liked to run around and snuggle with the girls. A couple times I took him out for walks in his little pouch, but he didn't like it much so I stopped. He also had a teeny tiny leash and harness and did so well with it! He would walk around the yard on his tiny leash, but could only be so brave for a little while and would soon be climbing up my pants.
Colby didn't show signs of being ill, but he aged pretty quickly. I was supplementing him with Ensure and baby food to keep the weight on him for the last couple months. Thankfully, he never suffered from any health problems and was porphyrin free even when he died.
Now I have one rat left, Stevie McQueen. She's a girl in spite of her name, my boyfriend named her after the rat on the show House. She's always been the most dominant and cheeky rat, so I guess it's not too surprising that she survived all the others. Now she's all alone though... I knew it was going to happen eventually. I'm not really up to getting more rats, even though I have a whole box full of new hammocks and toys. They have such short lives and I worry enough about the bunnies dying early. Maybe I'll have more rats sometime in the future, in fact I hope I do, maybe 20 years from now... But for now, I'm not planning to get anymore. Poor Stevie is going to have to live out the rest of her life by herself
Oh and Amy, I'm sure Coco and Leo are having fun! That rat pile emoticon is so adorable.
