HAHA! Chew THIS you little &$*()(#$*)@#'s!!!

Well of repeted nuisince is the desire my rats seem to have to chew their big water bottles - regardless of them being full or not.

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...6/2/chewed.jpg

And I really don't know why this hadn't occured to me earlier as a cheap and easy bit of preventative maintenance:

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/files/1/0/6/2/dew.jpg

Not only does it prevent them from chewing the bejeebus out of the plastic it also seems to prevent them from using the water bottle as a climbing post - they slip right off the aluminum!

Brilliant! A stroke of sheer genius! :ohmygod:

Very good idea! I like your title even more! I used to have that problem with my rats too. Hopefully they don't learn to like the taste of aluminum!

That's awesome! I never had this problem, but my cousin does. Heh.. gotta tell her that.

Ah Ha! That is sheer awesomeness! Might just work better than my cayenne pepper trick. I love that idea, thanks for being the genius that we all knew you were! :)

Smulkin when I was about 9, I started raising rats and mice for a local pet shop or two to help fund my herp addiction. I had some major problems trying to keep water bottles around ... I found that hunts tomato paste cans fit the small water bottles as well ;)

Good to know - we use quite a bit of that as well. Red Bull cans might fit the small ones too - but for some reason the seem to leave those alone (must not be able to get as good a foothold). Appreciate the shared info!

What a great idea
You Da Man!

I had about 10 of them doing that in several different cages..lol I sat in there and waited to see who was doing it and pulled them out and smacked them on the "rat rock" I use to kill me rats..lol.. No problems now..lol

Hehe - I instill such discipline myself.

Last night I was in the back room removing the food bowls from the shepherd cage and I saw this dark streak bounding across the workbench (it was pretty messy as I'd piled a good bit of stuff up there Friday in order to clean). It was a blur and certainly unexpected, knocking a few things over - all I could think of was that scene in Alien where after popping out o Hurt's stomach the little critter tears off across the table. Even as I was convincing myself I had seen ANYTHING at all for real it dawned on me that it must be an escaped rat. But MAN that first unexpected burst of movement froze me in my tracks. Once caught the sacrifice to the AfRock was inevitable (couldn't very well put him back in with the others so he could share his houdini techniques).

But it was a good feeding day - trimmed the population out nicely. Still I think we are now in the phase where rodental reproduction is going to outpace the feeding rate of our herps. Only one thing to do in THAT situation . . .