Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Rats, in Both the Literal and Exclamatory Sense

We picked up The Sarah Rat's little friend last night.  More like little "friends" because my friendly local rat supplier (also my snake breeder) knows a softy when she sees one coming -- like recognizes like -- and a softy I am, be it for tiny cute scaly things or tiny cute fuzzy things.

Yes, it's a wonder I can feed tiny cute fuzzies to tiny cute scalies.  Lots of cognitive dissonance going on here.  Anyway...

So I'd emailed L and told her we'd be coming by to pick up a little friend for Sarah; she emailed me back saying she'd go through and find a nice, sweet female rat to be Sarah's cagemate.  When we came in to pick her up, there were three.

We took them all home.

Since there's been such a huge new pet invasion in our house, one purpose of adding one additional rat to our household (one!) was to give the Elder his very own tiny rodent.  He's not into the scalier residents of the house, but he does like the furry ones and has been fascinated with Sarah.  So he looked through the new rats and picked the largest of the group, a fawn-colored red-eyed dumbo rat with a white blaze down from the forehead to the nose.  Then he went back to work on collecting ALL the Pokemanz in the world (someone has to do it) and the Gum Zombie and I stared at our new babies.

As I watched all the rats interacting and adjusting to both Sarah (and Sarah to them) and to their new surroundings, I started to get worried.  Something was "off" about the Elder's rat.  I picked it up and flipped it over...

So now we have The Sarah Rat, Isobella, Nicole, and Oops.

I've got a call in to the vet to see if we can get Oops neutered.  Here's hoping the girls are too young to get knocked up.  Even I have my limits -- I do NOT need fifty rats.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Reptile Birthday Party

The Gum Zombie's birthday party was this past weekend, and everyone had a marvelous time!  The poor child was born exactly a week before Christmas (that was the one year I had all my shopping done before Thanksgiving), so we tend to do his bigger "friends" birthday party after everyone's back from the holidays.  And since there is massive reptile love going on with the child, well, what better to have at your party than numerous reptiles?

We saw a bearded dragon, two leopard geckos, a gargoyle gecko, two ball pythons (normal and albino) a baby hognose, a two-year-old male Dumeril's Boa (I covet that snake -- in my head I've named him Gilgamesh but I just don't have the housing for him at the moment), and then, this lovely girl:
Angelica is a red-tailed boa (BCI) and is decidedly not petite.  She weighs around 50 lbs and is quite the handful!

Now imagine the reaction I got to this picture on my Facebook page.  It was awesome.  Heh.

Otherwise, everyone is doing well.  Lucy and Scales are eating and growing, bless 'em, and Sarah and Slither continue to do the same. I also have the added burden of the mental gymnastics caused by having a pet rat.  Yes, what was once strictly food is now a welcome resident and is decidedly NOT food.  ARRRGHHH!!!

Adding insult to injury, we're picking up another one tonight because Sarah-the-Rat (the Gum Zombie loves her and we agreed we could have a warm-blooded Sarah in addition to a cold-blooded Sarah) needs company.  Apparently, rats are social creatures and require the company of at least one additional rat so they don't get terribly depressed.  Thus far Sarah seems fine by her lonesome, but she's a sweet little girl and I don't want to put her to the test.  So we're getting another too-young-to-be-pregnant (please God, no babies!) female rat to be her cagemate.

And that is IT.  I swear.

That is, until I get together the stuff I need for my Dumeril's enclosure...

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Just a Quickie

Here's a recent picture of Lucy and Yours Truly.  Please pardon the blurriness -- Little Miss Snakiness was NOT cooperating and kept moving around.  But she sure is cute :)