Oops, I tried to edit my post but it took too long. What I meant to say was that I don't currently keep pet rats. However in the past I have kept rats that I considered to be pets and had snakes at the same time. It's really not that unusual and I never thought there was anything odd about it. When my Dad was a kid growing up on a farm, he had a pet pig named Orville. Orville would come when you called, would follow you around like a dog and loved to be petted and scratched behind the ears. At the same time, they raised hogs on the farm for slaughter. It's really not that unheard of, pets are pets and food is food. I'm sure a lot of people who grew up on farms could tell you the same type of story.