While feeding Newman this week, as well as last week, I heated up the rat pup with his cage top off and the bag open so he really got a good whiff. He started coming out of his hide within 30 seconds or a minute of the blow dryer turning on.

As soon as I picked up the rat pup and brought it near his cage, he started striking at the air and fake leaks in the upper part of his cage (3-4 strikes, completely missing the pup). I touched the pup to his nose and guided him down closer to the bottom and he took it right away.

Is this normal behavior? I'll upload a video shortly, it isn't great because I had to keep moving his food around to show him where it was. He had a bad shed, but doesn't appear to still have his eye caps and I got 95% of it off aside from the top of his head and neck.