Normal Pair

[Mehelya]

BeelzeBall, Thanks for the welcome, I am already overly addicted to the site as it is...

Ax01, My limited knowledge, and long hours of pouring over "normal" photos, as well as the fact that normals can be so variable in a single clutch... I have noticed the following so far:

1. The "head stamp" that is starting to show up.
2. The alien heads are too perfect and too uniform to be normal.
3. The blushing/flaming up the sides seems "wrong" for a normal.
4. There seems to be a darker brown developing as a "halo" around the "alien eyes" (almost similar to the black pastel alien heads). More so on the female than the male. All this is happening inside the alien heads.
5. There are patches of white where by all accounts there shouldn't really be (separate from the belly white coming up in the blushing/flaming)...
6. Their colors are just different to the normals that I have been looking at over the last few weeks.
7. The upper half of their eyes is lightening up slowly, compared to the lower half of the eye.
8. Let's not mention the variable-ness of the bellies...
9. The white borders on the alien heads is too uniform on these chaps...


Ax01, is there anything in that exhaustive list that matches what you are seeing? I've been comparing them to so many "normals", and they just don't fit the bill exactly, but being the leftovers of the pairing they came from, I can only label them as normals...

Now, I just need to get the small female to eat. We are going into winter, and temps have dropped drastically, and she is being fussy. Male is in the exact same setup as her, and he is pounding the fuzzy mice, but she is just cruising around now and then, and doesn't even want to know the food I offer her. Giving her another week then will try scenting a fuzzy with her previous food type (pinkie rats, which I cannot get hold of, only pinky mice and fuzzy mice) and see how she goes. I think she's imprinted on rats, and as good as that is for when she's bigger, the smallest rats I can source are currently weaner/hopper rats.