We found an online ad for female rats, and of course we went and collected them. The photos above were from the ad.
They were $20 each, and the man who was selling them said he would give us three for $50. Of course, we did that.
We ended up with a white rat with dark red eyes and two orange ones.
They were around the same age as Patch, but the seller said they were about 8 weeks old. They were much younger than Mushroom, so I disagreed that they were 8 weeks of age, they are more like 4 weeks old.
We decided to give them the 20th of June as their birthday.
It was while I was taking these photos that I realised one orange girl had damage.
She had a bitten ear, and on later inspection her hair is very scruffy.
I was worried about her health, but she seemed fine.
The other orange girl was very timid and scared. She hid in the sack the entire time and wouldn’t come out.
We decided to name the white girl Ruby, the torn-ear girl Scruffy, and the timid orange girl Ginger.
The seller said that he fed them mealworms and anything from the kitchen, and this sparked another journey looking into producing mealworms – because they are also good for fishing bait. That’s a journey will will consider shorlty.
Ruby
Ruby is absolutely gorgeous. She is very friendly and is happy to snuggle with me on the couch. She curls into a ball in my hand and stays there for a long time. She is very affectionate and has obviously been handled a lot.
She will easily be my best friend.
Ruby is funny, she climbs across the top of the cage like monkey bars, with her back legs dangling in the air. She must have very strong arms.
Scruffy
Scruffy is precious. She follows Ruby around a lot and copies behaviours. Scruffy is clearly the “little sister” who gets in the way the whole time but wants to follow the older sisters around.
Scruffy is gentle and loves pats. She really enjoys snuggling and even bruxes with the typical eye bulging. It is so cute.
Her hair is a bit scruffy and thin in areas, and when I first got her home I thought that she wouldn’t last the night because she looked like she had been in the wars.
She is the strongest, cutest little girl I’ve ever met.
Ginger
It is nearly like we only have two rat girls. Ginger only comes out when there aren’t any people around. She is scared and hides the entire time. I will have to work with her a lot to break her out of that behaviour. She doesn’t need to be so scared, especially when the other two are so friendly.