Real Rats: Snoogie's Marvelous Mystery Babies, Part Two
At playtime on the third day after I noticed Snoogie's lumps moving around, I checked her out and noticed she was bleeding a bit from her vagina. The babies were on their way! Snoogie hadn't even begun to build a nest, but I noticed that Softie had been piling stuff up around her as if she knew what was going on. I decided not to leave Softie in with her sister, since Softie was not very tame yet, and I didn't want her hurting the babies out of fear. In retrospect, I probably should have let her stay, but we were all new at this stuff! I finished off the nest Softie had been building and hoped that Snoogie would use it.
That night was very exciting. I kept discreetly peering into Snoogie's cage, and every now and then I caught a glimpse of more and more pinkies moving about in the nest. Snoogie did not seem very happy with motherhood - she seemed scared and in quite a bit of pain. By morning she had a nest full of babies, but she wasn't spending much time with them. She kept burying them under more and more layers of bedding. I was afraid of checking on them for fear she would either bite me or hurt the little ones, so I left her alone.
She must have been feeding them, though, for they lived for four days without incident. Except I kept finding one of the babies out of the nest. After sitting to watch them for a while, I realized that this baby was exceptionally big and strong, and after feeding, he would hang on to a nipple and be dragged across the cage. When he got full, he'd let go and fall off somewhere in the cage, and she would just leave him there. I kept putting him back in the nest and then finding him out again. On the fourth day, I found him out of the nest under a thin layer of bedding, dead. Poor guy was too strong for his own good.
By then they all had names. I had taken a few good looks at them while Snoogie was out resting and visiting with her sister and the other girl rats. Rats can be sexed within a day or two of birth by comparing the distance between the urethra and anus. We had 7 boys (a blue Berkshire, two blue hooded, two agouti hooded and two agouti Berkshire) and 3 girls (one blue Berkshire, one agouti hooded and one agouti Berkshire). I had been listening a lot to Beatles music and they were all named after the desserts in the song Savoy Truffle. The boys were Savoy Truffle, Pineapple Heart, Montelimar, Coffee Dessert, Coconut Fudge, Gurgle and Gregle (my daughter named the last two!), and the girls were Ginger Sling (our current mascot), Cool Cherry Cream and Crème Tangerine. Savoy Truffle was the one who died. He was a soft blue Berkshire guy who would have been beautiful....
Latest Articles