Rats are amazing animals. (Visit the link for details.) They’ve gotten a bad rap in many societies, but some societies revere them. I can see why, as a result of watching my own.
I’ve had pet rats several times in my life. Right now I have nine females; one is presently on loan to her former owner. They are smart, clever, fastidious, and extremely risk-averse. They don’t jump downward very far. They will jump up and sideways far more readily.
They’ve been living atop their cage in a rat maze condo, 100% free to roam (but they don’t, except into the ferret cage and the terrarium that I set up for them beneath their rat condo). I rebuild the rat maze condo out of cardboard boxes about every ten days to two weeks, not because they’re dirty (they usually use the birdcage I established as their litter box) but because the food they take into their mazes to store can attract fruit flies.
If parts of their internal digs get too messy, they evict the offending materials out one of the holes in the front of the condo (not the back, where I can’t get at it) so I can spot it and vacuum it up. They seem to understand I’m their housekeeper. They often watch as I vacuum around the base of their habitat (no rat turds on the carpet, just pea hulls and other food stuff that drops off) or suck up the corn and pea hulls (husks?) that they leave behind when they eat those delicacies.
They’re skittish, as they ought to be.
They’re little; most of the beings in their lives are much larger than they are, and many are predators, so the little amygdala in each of their brains keeps them well-advised of potential dangers. Pointed or extended fingers make them nervous, but poking my nose and face in their direction will attract curious whisker-sniffs, cute little rat hellos.
I feed them by hand by putting the food atop my thumb and first finger (both digits squished together to form a fleshy table). They feel less threatened when I do this so they don’t lunge for food when I offer it that way. (I got bitten only once when one of the rats couldn’t distinguish between my fingers and the piece of avocado I held between them in her mad dash to grab it. They go insane for avocado, but I can’t give it often because they’d overeat it. It’s very fatty, as you know.)
When I swap out their rat maze condo, I can handle them without fear of being bitten . They have never offered to bite me because I’m patient and kind with them. I move slowly, speak softly and kindly, and lift them to move them over to the new digs when I know they are feeling okay about that. They know what I’m doing each time, after months of the same routine. In fact, most of them will transfer themselves to the new digs; all I have to do is hold the old maze box up while they evict themselves. But a few usually stay behind, so I have to carefully tear apart the old maze, lift them out, and send them on their way.
Don’t Like Their Tails?
Get over it. Ignore their tails. Look at the rest of them. Nature didn’t make them to meet your aesthetic sensibilities. They’re utterly adorable to me, every millimeter of them.
Cruel Killing of Rats Chaps My Hide
A couple years ago, we had a few rats living under our home, so my sister called an exterminator. Unbeknownst to me, they set out sticky rat traps instead of the old-fashioned ones that kill them a lot faster (usually instantly) by breaking their neck. When I saw dead rats in the sticky traps, I went ballistic. That company is no longer employed by us, needless to say.
I think sticky rat traps are the most horrible way to rid homes of unwanted rats. They take hours or even days to die. I wouldn’t wish that kind of death on even our former president (last name starts with T and ends with what he is, in kinder terms than I usually use), whom I loathe with every fiber of my being. I shudder every time I think about how they must have suffered before they died. (If you’re going to kill something, make it quick. Jesus Jumped Up Christ! Would you sticky trap a human being, or one of your pets? If you would, please unfriend me right now. Your tribe and mine are not compatible!)
I suggest if you think it’s perfectly legit to use any means necessary to rid your home of small mammalian pests that you put these sticky traps where you can watch them. I promise you you’ll only have to watch one mouse or rat succumb in this horrible way, but I do suggest you watch until you can’t stand it another second (which should take about five seconds, tops), and then kill the poor thing and throw out the goddamn trap. Just because you can hide it and NOT watch the struggles and eventual death throes of another being doesn’t mean you should tolerate it in your home. Get rid of the damn thing. Use a non-kill method or an instant-kill method.
We need to stop treating animals horribly, period! Doing so gives some humans license to treat other people horribly. (In fact, most people in prison for horrible crimes started out tormenting, torturing and killing animals.) And that’s not the only reason not to do it. If your heart can treat an animal horribly, something is wrong with you. Period.
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, the human in civilization surveys the creatures through the glass of knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err and err greatly. For the animal shall not be measured by us. In a world older and more complete than ours they move, finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.” – Henry Beston, The Outermost House
