1) If you ever get your hands on a rat that's sufficiently pregnant, pick her up and flip her over onto her back. (Disclaimer: Olive is calm enough for this. Your mileage may vary.) If you're very careful, you can feel each individual baby rat inside her stomach through her belly.
This is
[ ] Gross
[ ] Awesome
Awesome.
And amazing. How many did you count? And will any end up with little Spike fingerprints in their wee soft skulls?
That is so cool!
AWESOME! You can do it with guinea pigs, too. It's uber neat to feel them turn over, especially when they kick you with the teeniest little foot.
That's pretty awesome, I'm not gonna lie.
Everyone gets an A!
I can only feel four babies in Olive. I'm sure that's not all there are, though. Olive is, after all, a rat.
GROSS GROSS GROSS. D:<
Ew.
That would be great news...I would know how many rat pups I was going to have to feed to my snakes later...
Heh. Olive's a pet variety rat, not a feeder. A Dumbo Rex, if you want to get technical, which basically means she's got unusually big ears and frizzy fur.
If I'm lucky, her offspring'll get the same features. But I've never been lucky.
Still, the father's a blonde and she's a Russian blue-ish color, so even if I don't get Dumbo Rexes, I'm at least guaranateed to be spared the boredom of a litter of pink-eyed whites or black-hooded whites. (No offense to rat owners with either, of course. I have a black-hooded white myself, and my favorite rat ever was a PEW. It's just that those two varieties are like the John Smith of domesticated rat-dom. Snore.)
I did that with a cat once...and with a human, but never a rat.
That's awesome!! I miss my rat from college. It was a Satin "silver fawn" variety named Cinnamon. After graduating, I sat in a car with the cage on my lap for 8 hours since my new apartment mates refused to let me bring him to Chicago... And later that fall I found out the friend who was rat-sitting FORGOT TO FEED HIM.
Used to breed rats, both as feeders and pets. My personal two (and adamantly gay, so breed-less) were Puck and Faramir, a smooth-haired Russian Blue and a Caspian Hooded Rex, respectively. Puck was very dainty, lean, long-fingered and well-groomed. He won 2nd for Best In Show and 1st in behaviour (sitting still, not using claws when climbing arms, etc.) Faramir was heavy, frizzy, with that amusing pear-shape that some rats get in their hindquarters. Totally the bottom in the relationship. Never won anything except the gag medal for the "Squishy Rat Contest". Very well-behaved, too, of course. Even when he got an absess and we had to cut him open and drain it for three days. He squirmed a little, and licked my fingers, and gave me sad-rat-eyes, but never scratched or bit. Both long passed now, but they once adopted a runaway rat from another cage, and groomed him well to be behaved and pretty, and at least HE bred. And now I'll stop blogging on your comment-board.
Definately awesome...the closest thing i ever had to a rat was a guinea pig..my mother hated rats...i always wanted to buy one behind her back and sneak it into her sheets while she was asleep..does that make me a bad person? And more importantly, should i care if it does?
Good luck with your babies Spike, lets just hope they dont distract from Templar too much :]