Rats.....I couldn't do it..

[Sunny1]

The other day my kids and I went on a hunt for a feeder rat for my BP. Up until now she has been eating mice, but is now big enough to go for weanling rats. So far she has only ever eaten live for me, which has not been a problem for me until now. Well, after going to a number of petstores, I was starting to realize that it is so much harder for me to find the correct size live rat because a lot of the family owned type petstores breed their own rats in the stores so if I go looking at the wrong time I could be out of luck. Well, after much searching, I remembered a small petstore very near my house, so on a whim, we went. They had the correct size rat their, I asked to look at them before I bought one so I could check out health, quality, etc. Well, it was getting late at that point, my son was hungry and tired, and anyone with a two year old knows what that can mean...LOL. So I asked for one, didn't check the box, paid and left. When we get home... there were two in the box...somehow they must have misunderstood me or something. Anyway, so my daughter wanted to hold one, and me being a softy, let her. So of course I held them too, and I think ya'll get the picture...

I am guessing, from doing research here and on other sites, that they are about 4 weeks old.... eyes are still all squinty. I am almost 100% sure that they are both females.





The one is a beige hooded I believe, but am not sure of the other girl. She is all black with white feet and tip of tail, plus white on her belly. Here is a belly shot of her. Sorry it is a little blurry, my camera is not great for close ups, but ya'll still get the idea.


Here is another that shows the white tips on the black female...sorry about the linty apron as a background...LOL.


So know they are keepers, I just couldn't feed them off after having played with them. Haven't yet named them, but they are now a few days older than in the pics. Eyes are fully open now and they have been running around and exploring, grooming themselves and each other, overall just too darn cute and doing well. They are both living in a 10 gal aquarium together that I had used as a mouse tank to help fatten up mice before feeding them to my BP. Plan on going to a much bigger cage once I find one and they are slightly older. Man, feeding live has never bothered me with mice, but these guys are too cute. Arrrgh!!