Rats

Jim's woods

Rats

Ever since I was little, I've had pets. When I was six years old, my older brother had a pet guinea pig, he called 'Ogilvie'. A chubby orange, black and brown thing. Jealous, I asked if I could keep a pet too. I was granted permission, of the sort and allowed to select a couple goldfish. Of course as is my nature I picked out a couple of those big googly eyed goldfish. You know the kind that come bloated with tiny fins and big bulging eyes? I like things that are a little different from normal. So I gave them names, sure I did. Kids that age even name their stuffed animals. One I called Frankenstein, the other one Igor.

I don't think I had them long enough to develop a meaningful relationship. Not that they perished or anything, at least not in my company. At the time we lived on Burris street in central Hamilton, there was a young couple living next door to us, who happened to be medical researchers, or biology students, or something, at McMaster University. Either way, They took a keen interest in my google eyed goldfish when I told them about Frankenstein and Frank's partner Igor. Such a keen interest I couldn't understand, but they offerd to trade me a live, furry and warmblooded, lab rat, in exchange for the two goldfish.

Even at the age of six, I was able to recognize a deal of a lifetime and with some whining and hounding of my parents, I was able to make the exchange. I wound up with a grey and white female hooded rat that I gave the unassuming name of 'Rainbow' to. I adored Rainbow the rat. I could hold her and pet her, she was warm and soft and had tickly whiskers. I found her pointy little face quite endearing. I even liked her long pink scaly tail that so many people detest. Wasn't there even a farmer's wife somewhere that cut off the tails of three blind mice, because she disliked them so much? Twisted old broad, that's animal cruelty! I won a prize in a children's pet show at a local library with Rainbow, for the pet with the longest tail. Every pet there won a prize, but you get the idea.

Anyhow, Rainbow and I got along great, she was smart, could do tricks, like jump several feet from my bedroom desk into my lap and stand on her hind legs to beg for treats. I had no way of knowing how old she was, or even what kind of tests, if any, had been performed on her before I got her, so when she passed away it was generally assumed that she had died of old age.

Rainbow was the first pet, but not the last to die in my hands. I was stunned and mystified when she started kicking and convulsing in my cupped hands. Then she stopped and was just laying there dead. I cried, but also knew that nothing lives forever. But having her die in my hands? Life can be cruel.

I may not have known it then, but that was probably for the best. Now that I'm grown up and have seen more of life's hardships, I can't think of a better way for a beloved pet to go, but in the comforting hands of it's owner. I was so impressed with Rainbow that I had many more pet rats thoughout my life. They were interspersed with the occasional guinea pig from time to time and after we moved to the country, my other brother had a black and white rabbit called Boots for a while, but even my brother was won over by Rainbow's talents and he eventually took to keeping a pet rat as well. So the two of us had pet rats and had many adventures with them.

Our friend even got a pet rat. It didn't take him long to see the joy our rats brought to our lives. So after his teddy bear hamster 'Aslan' disappeared in his house one day, he got a rat instead. Cam's rat was an albino rat. All white with red eyes. Cam named his rat appropriately enough, calling him Moby, the great white rat. I remember Moby well. we called him 'Mobes' for short.

Moby was a male rat and ours were female. So when my brother and I brought our rats over to Cam's house to play, both our rats ended up getting pregnant. Rats can have large litters, but it seemed that our rats had extra large litters. I remember the cage being just loaded with baby rats. After both litters were born around the same time, we had twenty three rats in that one cage.

Domesticated rats, as a rule are supposed to have a life span of 2-3 years which seems pretty short, especially considering that our rats always lived much longer than that. Up to twice as long. I think the longest one of our rats lived was six years. When I went online to do the calculations for 'Rat years to Human years Equivalency' their calculator only went up to three years. So according to the calculator a three year old rat is 100 years old in human years. Meaning our rats were living as long as the human equivalent of two hundred years...wow, just imagine. I suppose I'm right then, in saying we took very good care of out rats.

It stands to reason that pets left to languish in a cage by themselves with very little human contact live a shorter, less fulfilling life. Pets that are taken out and played with and loved, feel loved and maybe even feel a sense of belonging and purpose. Therefore, outliving their counterparts who are left to grow flabby and bored. Our pet rats were a big part of our life and came with us on many outdoor excursions and adventures. They got to experience life to the fullest.

So when I describe some of the things we did with our rats, these are activities we did WITH them and not TO them. I never felt as if we were being cruel to our rats, we loved them and we cried when they passed away. I believe they lived to be six years old, or two hundred in human years, which is astounding, because we took them everywhere, in fair weather and foul. They felt blazing sunshine, nibbled on fresh green grass and ran through cold powdered snow, breathing fresh air like the rest of us. If ever there was an experiment conducted on extending the longevity of rats, my brother and I were the masters behind this study. They ate what we ate, did what we did, went where we went and slept in our pockets when they were tired.

The older my brother and I got, the more we became accustomed to grabbing our rats before heading out with our friends. Sounds weird I know, but it was second nature after a while. We were very protective of our little friends that we carried in our pockets, or in my case on my shoulder. I had a brown and white hooded rat called Rufus and my brother had a solid grey rat called Arthur.

We took them out in the winter time and after a fresh snowfall, we'd toss our rats into a snowdrift. They'd disappear for a second under the light snow, then burst out of the drift and come racing up our pantlegs seeking warmth. Of course this made us squeal with laughter as their cold little paws scrambled up our legs. We'd have to extract them from our jeans and hold them up to our faces breathing warm air onto them. We might do this a couple times, three at the most, you can tell when they are fed up with it and we weren't out to torture the poor things, even though some people might see it that way. So they would'nt experience undue suffering, we'd carry them in our coat afterwards, to thoroughly warm them up. We also introduced them to sledding. I had a toy plastic boat that you could take the top off, a pet rat fit perfectly inside and the flat bootom of the boat made for a perfect little toboggan. We'd slide them down a small hill, much to our delight, probably not theirs though. If anything, it got their little hearts pumping, plenty of cold fresh air in their lungs and provided us with some fun and excitement too. They were always relieved to be back in the warm confines of our coats, which may have given us a false sense of comraderie with our pet rats. I mean they didn't have much choice in the matter did they? Like I said though, we truly did love them and wouldn't attempt anything that might get them killed, not deliberately at least.

Growing up we used to make our own toy parachutes out of garbage bags and string. Normally we'd just tie GI Joes or other toys to the parachutes and throw them up in the air as hard as we could and watch them float down again. One day with our rats we decided that maybe a good adventure for them might be skydiving. This was probably the most irresponsible idea we ever had for the rats, but we were careful. Someone had a Fisher Price, toy lion's cage. It fit a rat perfectly. The next step was making a garbage bag parachute large enough to float them safely to the ground. The launch point was from the top of the roof on our friend Jimmy's garage. The flight arc at it's apex would have been at least thirty to forty feet high, depending on how hard we threw the lion cage and bundled chute. I can't rember who did the throwing, but Jimmy was a softball pitcher and he had a great arm. Besides it was his father's garage and it might be a bad idea for anyone else to climb the garage. So I'm pretty sure Jimmy was in charge of throwing them into the air. Of course we had some test flights to check the probability of failure. Eveything seemed to be in order and the parachutes were opening every single time. Now for the rats. Every rat was going up one time. We didn't want to push our luck with repeat flights. Rufus went up first. She had a perfect flight. When my brother saw that the parachute was reliable and Rufus had come down in the driveway nice and gently, he sent his rat Arthur up. Arthur had a good flight too. Now it was Moby's turn. Whether Cam wrapped his chute to tightly or the strings got tangled I don't know. After Jimmy threw Moby way up high off the garage roof in a perfect arc, did we see something wrong. Normally the cute would pop open as soon as it was on the way down, but Moby kept falling. At first I watched and waited for the parachute to deploy. Then as soon as it started to look bad, I squeezed my eyes shut. I heard Cam cry, "Moby!" and I expected to hear the impact. Instead I heard the pop of the chute as it opened about five feet from the ground. Moby survived and that was the last time we used the parachutes for the rats.

Whenever our pets died of old age they received a proper burial. We'd wrap their little bodies in a cloth or toilet paper shroud, put them in an appropriate sized box to serve as their casket and filled the box with stuffing. Then we'd dig a deep hole in a specific part of the yard where we wouldn't dig for worms to fish with and the grave wouldn't be disturbed by our mother's gardening. Then we'd bury them deep, grieve and move on.

Once in a moment of sheer stupidity, I took the same red and white plastic boat we had been using for a sled and I removed the top to put my rat, Rufus inside. Then I tried to float it down the creek, in the winter. The creek was running strong due to a recent thaw and I put too much faith in the toy boat. As soon as I put the boat and my rat sealed inside, adrift in the raging creek, it took on water and sank right away. It only took a couple of seconds and it was bumping along the bottom and being swept away in the rapids with poor Rufus at the helm. Without hesitation I jumed in the creek and plunged my arm up to the shoulder in the icy water to save her. I had the top off that boat and Rufus against my chest in less than three seconds. Lucky for her, rats are incredibly resilient and apart from being soaked to the skin and shocked by the cold water, she survived. I waded out of the creek and onto the snowy bank cursing my own stupidity. That had been too close for comfort and I'd almost lost my pet rat for good. The boat was history, swept away with the chunks of ice that at first looked like a dramatic adventure for her, but almost proved her demise. I walked home with stiff frozen legs, keeping Rufus warm in my coat and put her in her warm dry cage with extra snacks. I left her to recover with her friend Arthur for a few days before taking her out again.

My brother and I developed a term for incidents that involved a little misadventure with our rats. We called these moments, 'Natural disasters', convinced that, whatever didn't kill them, made them stronger. Did that increase their longevity? Maybe so.

I used to take Rufus to school in the pocket of my coat. that earned me a reputation of being a bit of a weirdo, but nobody else was bringing their pet to school. So there!

When Rufus was five years old in human years, or approximately a hundred and sixty-seven in human years, she died in an accident. We were all at the creek with our rats. We put our rats down in the wet grass to cross the creek with us and one at a time they jumped over the creek no problem. Unforunately, my friend beside me jumped the same time as Rufus did and his foot struck her when he landed. Death was swift and she died instantly. She received a hero's burial in the garden and that was the last rat I ever owned.

Since then I've gone on to have all kinds of other pets. Everything from a fire newt to cats, birds and pet rabbits. I've saved animals, rescued wild and domestic animals, rehabbed and rehomed animals, but I've always maintained that domestic, or lab rats, make for excellent pets. They are intelligent, gentle and loyal. They aren't complicated to care for and are inexpensive. They are also very interesting. There's all kinds of information and history about rats out there. Some good, some bad, but all of it is interesting.

Rats played a big part of my life growing up. Having them for pets taught me a lot about life and death in general. I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything. When I think about Rufus now, I remember her warmth and softness in my coat pocket. I remember having her as a companion when I was out walking in the sun, or rain by myself. A loyal little friend to talk to if I needed. I remember being so happy to see her standing up in her cage waiting for me to take her out for an adventure somewhere. She...they, will never be forgotten.

That my friends, is what I have to say about Rats...For now.