I'm just back from another long poker weekend with nothing to show for it but some empty pockets and a few business cards. I'm most excited about the one from Felix Gutierrz, president of Screaming Eagle Poker, a league run by and for our troops in Iraq. In the past, I've measured the success of my poker trips by how much winnings I bring home. This time, I'm declaring a moral victory just because I never once visited an ATM looking for more money to wager.
Exciting news awaited when I got home, however. The mother of my future pets has given birth. Her name is Hugs and she is a lilac fancy rat (that's her on the right). The dad is a chocolate named Mousse Tracks. We are hoping to get two female babies (probably one of each color) and will name them Lucy and Ethel. I'll be a first-time rat owner, but my husband has experience with the little critters. In fact, he once led what I now call the Great Rat Relocation.
When we lived in an old (circa 1935) brick Tudor a few years ago, we had several wild rats move into the basement. It was somewhat distressing to sense their furtive movements whenever I was downstairs working on my pottery, but I really decided they needed to go when they started making themselves at home in our living quarters. The deal-breaker was when I reached into a closed (I thought) bag of dog food with a measuring cup and almost scooped up one of the little buggers.
Curtiss and I agreed we did not want to exterminate the rats, we just wanted them out of our house. We purchased a live trap and a temporary cage and went to work. We laced the trap with peanut butter and within two days had three rats scrambling around a wire cage wondering what the heck had happened. We loaded the cage into the car and headed far out into the rural suburbs west of town. We found a nice wooded area and released the rats. It was quite a relief to see them scurry away.
Those rats would not have been suitable pets, but they were really cute, in a rodent kind of way.
But my contact with them (and an excellent National Geographic special) helped me overcome any lingering reticence about the species. I did lots of research and decided I'd like to have a couple around to keep my company in my office (which is upstairs where the dogs are not allowed).
I've ordered a cage and supplies, and expect my babies to be weaned and able to come to their new home within about five weeks. Expect plenty of posts about my new journey as a rat owner.
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