MY PET RATS
I was very much interested in these baby guineapigs, and was very much
surprised to find them so fully developed at birth. Tiny and Guinea
had families about the same time, and I found all the little pigs with
pretty, soft-haired bodies, open eyes, and their teeth through, the
milk teeth being already shed. In a few hours they could run by the
side of their mothers, and in two days they could nibble vegetables.
Unfortunately, Guinea became ill, also her brown baby. I gave her white
baby to Tiny, who was an excellent foster-mother to it, and taking
Guinea and Brownie upstairs, I put them on a hot-water bag.
In watching Guinea I shuddered, thinking of the grief of the little
girls, should she die. She breathed rapidly all the afternoon and
evening. If I had dosed her with castor or sweet oil, it might have
done good, but I did not think of it. At midnight she jumped up, ran
around the room, gasped for breath, and died. I put her in a white box
and sent for her little owners, who came sadly to see her. Never would
I have believed it possible that one could become so much attached to a
guineapig.
Guinea’s young one did well in the basement; the brown one died after I
had fussed over it for a week, getting up two or three times at night,
and stretching out my hand to poor Brownie, who would crawl on it to be
fed.
I had the over-zeal of ignorance, and gave poor Piggy undiluted cow’s
milk. Common sense might have taught me that a little water and a
little sugar should be added to the milk of a great strong creature
like a cow, when fed to any small animal. Afterward, I brought up
several young guineapigs whose parents had died. Just at first one
has to use a medicine-dropper or teaspoon to feed them, but in a
marvelously short time they will stick their own little noses in their
bread and milk.
One of my favorite pigs was a dark-colored, long-haired Peruvian, that
looked like a weeping willow, minus its trunk.
When I first got him his funereal appearance seriously affected some of
my birds. He lived, and was happy with me, and when I moved my pets to
my farm I took him and the other pigs with me. They so much enjoyed the
delicious red and white clover, and the kind attention of a relative to
whom I gave them, that when I sold my farm, I left my pigs behind me.
However, I have quite missed them, and often think that some day I must
again start a nursery of guineapigs.
I became very much fonder of them than of my rabbits. They were very
much better behaved, though I must acknowledge, that as far as my
experience with children goes, rabbits seem to have more power than the
gentle pigs of inspiring a warm affection.
The most enthusiastic rabbit-lovers I have ever known were two little
girls, who came to me one day with a pair of tiny white rabbits. Would
I give these little creatures a home? I was very glad to do so, for
I thought that my gray Rab, who was now a big handsome rabbit, would
not despise these creatures of her own kind, as she had despised
the guineapig. I put the little white fellows in with her, and to
my surprise she darted at them, and tried to injure them in such an
unmistakable way that I promptly pounced on her and took her out in
the furnace-room. She did not like this, and gazed angrily through the
wire door at the white rabbits that were careering around with the
guineapigs. She had been naughty, but still I was sorry for her. On
remembering her first friend, the spotted rabbit, I bought another
to play with her. She got on very well with this new friend, but the
little white rabbits fell into misfortune.
On going into the aviary one morning, I found one of them cold in
death. What had happened to him? There was nothing there that could
injure him. After some hard thinking and Sherlock Holmes examination of
tracks and signs, I discovered that during the night the poor little
rabbit had started to eat hay on the edge of the long, steep bank of
earth, had fallen down, and could not find the path leading to his
little brother above. He had died of fright, and I soon had the bank
low enough for guineapigs and rabbits to run up and down. The surviving
rabbit became ill, so I put him out in the warmer furnace-room, and
drove Rab and Spotty to the aviary.
This made fresh trouble. Rab had been quite upset when I took her from
the aviary, and now she was more upset because I had put her back.
She had become accustomed to the furnace-room, and she shook the wire
door, and gnawed the woodwork, and at last, seeing the rage she was in,
I allowed her to return to the furnace-room. She was so ill that she
lay down as if she were going to die. I slipped a hot-water bag under
her, and advised her to keep on it. She gazed about her in a peculiar
way with laid-back ears, looking as if she did not think much of my
opinion. However, she kept on the bag, only occasionally getting up to
take a long drink of cold water, and in a day or two was quite well.
While she was ill she did not molest the rabbit, nor did her companion,
Spotty, interfere with him. He was a pretty good rabbit, and not
bad-tempered, as Rab was. As soon as she recovered she sought the young
rabbit’s life, and I was obliged to have a stout enclosure made for
him, as I still wished to keep him in the warm furnace-room. I knew
there were rats in this room. We saw them running about with Rab and
Spotty, eating their grain with them, drinking from their water dishes,
nestling in their bundle of hay, and sitting by the furnace to keep
warm. I have always had a liking for rats, and it did not occur to me
that these well-fed creatures, with the peculiarly bright, intelligent
eyes, could or would kill my baby rabbit.
However, they did do so; and one January afternoon when I went to the
basement to feed my downstairs family, I was shocked to discover his
little blood-stained body in my path. The cruel rats had entered the
wire pen of the little fellow, had dragged out his body, and had eaten
his brains.
I ran for my father, who was always most sympathetic. He said he did
not see how the rats had pried up the heavy supports of the rabbit’s
cage. However, they had done it; and I wrapped poor Bunny up and put
him in the furnace--cremation being my preferred mode of disposing of
my pets’ bodies.
Then we spent the evening in making a trap for the rats, but I fancy
they watched us while we were doing it, and we, of course, caught
none of them. We did catch some young ones, however, and the five
tiny things looked so innocent as they sat in their trap that I could
not make up my mind to have them killed, and took the cage up to my
father’s study.
“Suppose we keep them,” I suggested, “and train them--make them
friendly with the young rabbits and pigs and birds.”
“Suppose we do,” he said; and leaving his books, he descended to the
aviary with me, and together we rigged a big cage against one of the
brick walls. There the rat babies could look at my pets, and get
acquainted with them.
Young rats are really pretty creatures. These little ones had white
breasts, pink paws, shell-like, whitish ears, black whiskers, and
bright, black eyes. They slept all day in a brown box at the top of
their big cage. This box looked something like a pulpit, and, if
roused, they would lean over their pulpit, holding on by their pink
paws, their beady eyes seeming to say, “What do you want? We don’t like
to play till night comes.”
One day one of them became ill, and lay under the straw at the bottom
of the cage for some time. It was almost human to see the way in which
he would stretch one little pink paw from under the straw, and feebly
move it to and fro.
When these young rats were partly grown, we caught two tiny ones and
put in with them. The new-comers were very anxious to get up in the
brown box, and tried climbing up hand over hand, or rather paw over paw
toward it. The big ones amused themselves by leaning out of the box and
pushing them down. I gave the little ones a tangle of wool to sleep in
on the bottom of the cage, and two or three days later the older ones
relented, and allowed them to climb up to sleep in the box.
It seemed to me particularly appropriate that my father, who is a
doctor of divinity, should take an interest in the training of these
young rats. So I was amused when he proposed to give them a whirligig.
This wheel was put in the cage, and soon my father had his rat students
so trained that when he struck the cage sharply, and said, “Come,
boys!” one of them would spring from the pulpit, his little feet
flying, his black eyes excited, and his whole appearance apparently
denoting his appreciation of the amusement of his spectators in his
mechanical performance, though I finally concluded that the intelligent
creature was supremely bored by it.
After a time one of these young rats managed in some way or other to
squeeze himself out of the cage. I did not concern myself greatly about
it. I intended to give every one of them their freedom some day, but I
was sorry for his evident loneliness, and amused beyond description to
see him one day trying to insinuate himself back into the cage.
He spent the most of the time on the top of the cage, but sometimes ran
about the aviary with the guineapigs and birds, and always squealed
loudly with delight when I entered with fresh food.
Whether he incited the others to escape from their cage or not, I did
not know; but one day I said to my father that his rats were very
quiet, and had not been eating much, also that only one performer came
out, and went round and round on his wheel, stopping occasionally and
holding on to the bars with his pink feet as if to say, “Where are my
brothers?”
I examined his cage, and found only three young ones in it; the other
four were running loose in the aviary, probably to the great delight of
the former solitary young one.
The other three soon got out, and now I had seven rats frisking to and
fro over the earth floor of the aviary. They had a delightful time,
stealing newspapers and straw from the guineapigs’ barrels. They made a
nice large nest in a hole in the earth, and for a time were model rats.
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