Oh Rats!

You will notice, I'm sure, that a lot of my postings will be about my animal encounters now that I am volunteering at the zoo. The fun thing about volunteering is that I am being introduced to animals I NEVER would have considered interesting let alone being willing to touch. Yet here I am having a blast and a new appreciation for some of those "yucky" animals. So I hope you will keep coming back and seeing what I get up to!


You can see from earlier postings how quickly I became comfortable handling some of the snakes, and over the past two weekends I've been tackling rats. Now - before anyone jumps away from the computer it is important to remember that the rats apart of the zoo's education program were born and raised in captivity, and in a clean environment.

I have come to appreciate how friendly they are, how they like to explore, and that they are rather clean animals. Again, I am referring to the ones at the zoo and I found out that many of the volunteers even had rats as pets. One person even carried the rat around on her shoulder when she got home from work! They definitely love to snuggle up.

Today I was handling one of the rats, trying to get more comfortable so I can present them in public, and after about 20 minutes or so, the rat had to go pee. Yep, I got peed on...but then again it means you are having a great day at the zoo! :) So I 'dried' myself and the rat off, and wrapped the rat in the blanket. As you can see they love to "nest".

One thing I *must* do before ending my day at the zoo is to give one of our pygmy tenrec's some lovin'. I have cedar in my hand sound asleep! What's cool about the tenrecs is they have such a little old man face, and their "fur" is more spiny - but not very sharp - though it can be if they are feeling threatened and curl up to defend themselves.