![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Feb. 17th, 2007 07:53 pmThis week was uneventful but fairly serene. Work was mostly normal, which means I went there and earned money and tried to ignore the seagull-like flappings and cries from the supervisor's area.
I'm also hosting two new rats, rescues. My friends Lena and Don, the initial rescuers, have just about closed up shop to new arrivals but this was a special case. Not a dumping but an instance of owners being obliged to leave their house and take up residence with the grandmother of one of them, who has declared NO PETS. Eleven rats and one rabbit would be noticed. I went to visit on Friday and two of the rats came home with me :-)
My resident foursome always get wildly excited when they pick up the scents of strange rodents on me. It's as though they're accusing me of being unfaithful. There was a minor meeting/scrapping between the two newcomers and my Ash, the only rat who can climb his own 3-foot high cage to the flat roof, where I'd placed the residence of the new fellows. Ash, otherwise known as "that long-tailed pillock", promptly rolled the little agouti-hooded on to his back and announced that he was the boss. It was brave but perhaps misguided for the smaller rat to leap up to his full four inches and demand, "You and whose army?" Knowing that Ash's answer would most likely be, "No army. Just me," [THWACK] I ended the social gathering at this point.
Ash is a nice rat, all my four are quite mild-mannered for adult males but still, these are adult strangers and to be treated with suspicion. Hopefully I can integrate them at least to the stage of sharing evening time out of the cages. They may yet go home; their owners do still want them if they can sort out their living arrangements. Don would probably be pleased if Hoppy the rabbit went home; Hoppy is way too fond of Don, Don thinks.
I also discovered today that I was host to five rats whom I didn't know I had. Don (who's also my landlord) was taking old weatherboard and insulation off the back of the house when he found a young female rattus rattus, who had made a very comfortable home in said insulation. She bolted for the far horizons. Judging by all the saved snail shells and other debris, she'd been there for quite some time. Certainly long enough to raise her latest litter, four fuzzy little blunt-nosed ratlets who weren't quite so quick but nevertheless all got away from me. I judged them at about 3/4 weeks of age, about old enough to be weaned and certainly old enough to survive should the mother not come back. Yes, this did concern us! Don said he'd have tried to move them away from the house had we been able to catch them but certainly not harm them.
That's probably it for latest news, except I had a small Lotto win which about covered my ticket cost and my cans of Coke for the next week.
I'm also hosting two new rats, rescues. My friends Lena and Don, the initial rescuers, have just about closed up shop to new arrivals but this was a special case. Not a dumping but an instance of owners being obliged to leave their house and take up residence with the grandmother of one of them, who has declared NO PETS. Eleven rats and one rabbit would be noticed. I went to visit on Friday and two of the rats came home with me :-)
My resident foursome always get wildly excited when they pick up the scents of strange rodents on me. It's as though they're accusing me of being unfaithful. There was a minor meeting/scrapping between the two newcomers and my Ash, the only rat who can climb his own 3-foot high cage to the flat roof, where I'd placed the residence of the new fellows. Ash, otherwise known as "that long-tailed pillock", promptly rolled the little agouti-hooded on to his back and announced that he was the boss. It was brave but perhaps misguided for the smaller rat to leap up to his full four inches and demand, "You and whose army?" Knowing that Ash's answer would most likely be, "No army. Just me," [THWACK] I ended the social gathering at this point.
Ash is a nice rat, all my four are quite mild-mannered for adult males but still, these are adult strangers and to be treated with suspicion. Hopefully I can integrate them at least to the stage of sharing evening time out of the cages. They may yet go home; their owners do still want them if they can sort out their living arrangements. Don would probably be pleased if Hoppy the rabbit went home; Hoppy is way too fond of Don, Don thinks.
I also discovered today that I was host to five rats whom I didn't know I had. Don (who's also my landlord) was taking old weatherboard and insulation off the back of the house when he found a young female rattus rattus, who had made a very comfortable home in said insulation. She bolted for the far horizons. Judging by all the saved snail shells and other debris, she'd been there for quite some time. Certainly long enough to raise her latest litter, four fuzzy little blunt-nosed ratlets who weren't quite so quick but nevertheless all got away from me. I judged them at about 3/4 weeks of age, about old enough to be weaned and certainly old enough to survive should the mother not come back. Yes, this did concern us! Don said he'd have tried to move them away from the house had we been able to catch them but certainly not harm them.
That's probably it for latest news, except I had a small Lotto win which about covered my ticket cost and my cans of Coke for the next week.