Coming of Age

As I slowly drifted off to sleep I heard a faint jingling. 
My boyfriend was content watching a DVR of MMA competitions at full volume and I had just flung my head onto the pillow for the billionth time. Even though I was frustrated by the number of times I had to get up from the coolness of my sheets, I was happy knowing that Monkey Butt was playing.


The day before, I realized that one of the five babies was positively male. When the day before that, I had had an inkling about his sex, I excitedly pointed out to my überly under-enthused boyfriend that I thought I felt tiny egg sacs underneath the fur.  Friday was their four week birthday. It was only Wednesday. Sexing and separation, so the internet has determined, happens between weeks five and six. Monkey Butt and his budding gonads were still in the clear. That was till I heard a ruckus among the ranks.


Sure enough I saw Cream & Sugar, or Sugar for short, racing from level to level being chased by one of her siblings. #%$&@!! 
I have been on alert as the days go by, anticipating "Week 5" and the possible signs of "humpage." Or, rather, hump-age. I was all too familiar with the ritual. Having been way too incredibly curious and naive at 12, I placed the family's male and female gerbils in the same cage to see what would happen. 


Reaching into the nearly always open cage, I pluck the instigator off of Sugar and sure enough in my hand is a squirming, much-much-larger-than-yesterday-testicled baby rat.  Drats!


"Baaaaabe. We gotta separate Monkey Butt. Look!" Holding up the baby for his inspection.


"Ewwww! Gross! Put him back. Don't hurt him." Because somehow displaying the rat's manhood to a male human is considered abuse. Instead, I place the baby on my neck and begin to worry about the possibility of ending up like my sister. 

32 gerbils later...
Photo courtesy of my sister

"But the internet says FIVE weeks. He's not even FOUR."
"Are you sure? Just give him one more night with his family and then we'll take him out."
Monkey Butt obviously oblivious to our concern seems to have calmed a little from his earlier activities and joins the rest of the group crammed into the tiny wooden house at the top level.

~~~~~~

From work I call The Pet Shop, the place that sold me both Glenda and the presumably pregnant Galadrielle. The "apprentice" tells me that it's probably best to separate him from the rest as soon as possible even though he's one day shy of four weeks. I text the boyfriend, "Put the baby in the old cage. Make sure he has food and water."


A few hours later I received this text: He's so sad.


Heartbreaking. I arrive home and see that my boyfriend placed the old cage on top of the dresser next to the Rat Manor and the baby was curled in a ball on top of the purple plastic shelf next to his dish of food. As I approached, he didn't move. Instead his eyes followed me until I opened the cage door. Poor thing. Pisanka ignored the smell and the noise of the toy mice I bought her. I gathered those and exchanged them for him. I picked him out of his rather large cage and kissed his tiny head. 

~~~~~~

"Maybe if you put the small travel cage into the bottom of the big cage." Just when I need divine inspiration, my boyfriend's ideas usually save the day. 

Sure enough, once I managed to get Glenda, the town mayor-needs-to-approve-all-activities-in-the-rat-community-first, out of the small cage I placed the baby in his new home. The crowd gathered and it seemed everyone was much happier with the new arrangement. While the rest were busy climbing up and down and sniffing through the wires of this new abode, Monkey Butt darted between exchanging sniffs and nudging the wool mice around. A drastically happy change from the forlorn looking baby I came home to earlier.


So the jingling I heard before I went to bed meant that he was at least able to amuse himself with the mice's "company" rather than moping and causing me more heartache knowing I had to separate him from potentially impregnating his sisters, mother, and aunt. 

When a Baby Goes Missing

"One. Two. Threeee. Four.

"One, two. Three. Four...

Monkey Butt is on my shoulder. Cream and Sugar is there... Dora and Domino are fighting...where the heck is the Silky One???

"Babe! I lost one of the babies!"

I was about to give everyone (that is, the animals) breakfast when I noticed that one of my baby rats was missing. For a split second my heart stopped. I looked down at the mess of papers by my feet on the low-standing night table. Not willing to put the small male rat on my shoulder back into his cage to begin to look for the missing critter, I summoned my boyfriend to help.

"Put the baby away," he instructed.

Reluctantly I put him away carefully pushed my head against the wall in an attempt to see behind the dresser. Dear God don't let it be stuck in a crevasse behind the dresser...

I slowly tilted the plastic bins filled with fabric toward me and again pushed my head against the wall. No rat.

Meanwhile my boyfriend began pulling clothes out of the wire shelving on the floor.

"Maybe if we let Glenda go, she might be able to find it," I suggested.

I gingerly lifted the rather large dark brown rat out of its enormous cage and put her on the carpet. I continued my search and moved to the white Ikea shelves.

"She found it! She's over here! Come here baby." My boyfriend, crouched on the floor, began shoving his large hands into the tiny space underneath the baseboard heater.

"She's not coming out. Can you get some treats?"

Grabbing Glenda before she was able to taste too much freedom, I put her back on the dresser. I picked up the small plastic bag of Kaytee Fiesta Yogurt Dipped Papaya Treat for Pet Birds that he bought the other day. When I mentioned that they only loved them because they were nothing but sugar he confirmed that in fact the bright orange Nerds-looking things were quite tasty.

"She doesn't like those. Get something else. Wait. Where'd she go? Can you see her? Oh wait. She's over here. I got her!"

Rising from the floor with the silky-haired baby in his hands he brought the seventh member of the rat pack back into the fold.

"Good girl, Glenda. Good girl." My boyfriend and I each took turns praising and petting the wonder rat.

Glenda that was pretty friggin awesome!