A Girl Named Swirl
Day 2
Day 3-7
Day 15
Ready to Go!

June 2, 2000

Why I allow myself to go to Petco is beyond me. But I can't pass up some of their prices. The Carefresh is
five bucks a bag and the rat food is the cheapest I can find. Unfortunately, no mom and pop stores can
match the Petco prices.  And of course, while at a Petco, I've got to check on the rodents. Half the time
their water is tipped over or they have no food and someone like me has to inform the buffoons that
couldn't care less about animals that their product has no access to water.

A few days ago I had been in there and saw in the "big rat" bin ($5.99 a piece) that one of the girls had
babies.  Amazingly there were a few females in the bin and a couple boys. Why these idiots keep the boys with
the girls is incomprehensible.  I knew the people that worked at the Petco couldn't care less about the
babies so I periodically the last few days, went there to check up on them. Each time I'd go, I'd see some
other female helping out with the babies, grooming, protecting them. And each time there would be less
babies. Of course the scum at the store were selling them as reptile food.   I even asked one of them how much the babies were and he said "99 cents" without hesitation. You'd think they'd at least let them grow a little (then again maybe it's better to give them up while their eyes are still closed and they don't know the sense of fear).

While in there today, I noticed the mom was with her babies and it appeared they were down to three. Despite the fact I have no room as it is, I had to take her. The morons at Petco would surely sell the mom and the remaining babies would quickly die. Or they'd sell the babies off and that would be that. So someone had to step in and give the
remaining babies a chance.

When I think about my rats, Rupert or CJ, or my late rats Felix or Oscar, and the fact that someone may
have ended up selling them as snake food when they were little, I cringe.  I'm sure I should have no problem eventually finding a home for the three babies. They're super cute, probably about nine-to-ten days old. Their eyes haven't opened yet.  Two are boys and one is a girl. The mom, who apparently has spent her whole life in a Petco snake bin, I've named "Swirl," because it looks like someone dipped her head in some vanilla-chocolate swirl ice-cream.  She doesn't like to be held yet and I can't even get her still enough to scratch her behind the ears yet.

I put her in the rabbit/rat cage that I still have left along with Samantha, the other save from a couple days earlier. Samantha is as unhuman friendly as Swirl. When the two saw each other, they both kind of sniffed and both kind of whined. But by the end of the day, they were fine, which is good, because Samantha doesn't get along with any of my regular rats yet.
 
 

I finally set up the hallway so it was sectioned off and let Swirl and Samantha run around free for a few hours. It was obviously the first time both of them have ever gotten to do this. I had to actually life the cage off its plastic bottom so they would get the picture that they didn't have to stay in the cage and could come out and run around. Both were hesitant at first, but both eventually came out. I picked up Samantha to her dismay and pet her for about 15 minutes. Scared as usual at first, she ended up loving it. I was surprised at how little she squealed at first.  Later I did the same thing again. She's a ways away from being human friendly but she's definitely a whole lot better than she was a couple days ago when she first got here.

For the first real time, I got to hold the babies for more than a couple minutes. Swirl seemed to be okay with me doing this. I did it yesterday for a short time and Swirl seemed a little uncomfortable. But this time she seemed more at ease as time went by.  All three babies are hooded and all three have a white dot on their foreheads (like my late rat Kato did). One of the boys has one eye starting to open so I assume they'll all be opening within the next 48 hours. When they're not sleeping, the babies move around a lot for little critters without eyesight.

It's weird knowing that this is the first day of their lives that these two poor girls ever got to actually run around free, have fresh veggies, do what they want without real fear (the only fear they have right now is the fear of the unknown, being in a new place doing stuff they've never done before). It's going to be a real event getting Samantha and Swirl to be more human friendly, and I don't have tons of time, but what time I have I will gladly invest in this project.