Like Chocolate For Ratties II
© Jane Adamo
Two benefits for sick or elderly rats: often when they won't eat anything else, they will eat chocolate. And I say, if they are moving toward the end and chocolate is all they will eat, well...let 'em have it. In this case, I'll try flavoring other more nutritious foods with chocolate to help them out: like offer chocolate pudding so they can get the benefit of the milk.
Chocolate will sometimes revive ratty appetites. For instance, I offer bread. Sick rat doesn't take it. I offer chocolate. Sick rat eats chocolate. That seems to prime the pump because AFTER THAT, he'll eat the bread!
My thrifty tip of the day: After Easter, go to the variety store and buy up a bunch of those half-price chocolate bunnies! Put them in thick mil plastic bags and bust them to bits. To avoid bag punctures, wrap the bag in a towel or put a piece of cardboard or a few sheets of paper over the bag before you hit with, say, a meat tenderizer mallet. If you bake, you now have plenty of chocolate chunks to put into cookies. And way cheaper than chocolate chips: in some cases, below wholesale price. And those bunny bits will keep just fine in the fridge all year until the next Easter. I remove the royal icing eyes before I bust them up. The accusatory stares make me uncomfortable.
Here's a fun toy you can make with chocolate: take the cardboard tube from toilet paper. Put a few little pieces of chocolate inside and then fold the ends over and crimp. This works with any food that the rat can smell through the cardboard. They love worrying that cardboard package until they get inside to the chocolate.
And finally, I once worked for a very elegant, expensive American chocolate company. It is sad but true that American chocolate is inferior to European chocolate (though not as bad as Russian chocolate which I understand is like biting down into a slab of brown, cocoa-scented wax).
It's the milk. European cows are generally treated nicer and more naturally, allowed to graze around and get exercise and are fed a more varied diet. The milk is better. And now, get this: even imported chocolate bars purchased in the USA aren't that great: I have it on good advice that when it comes to tea and chocolate, the European producers wisely keep the good stuff for their own, more selective markets, and send the second grade to the U.S. I believe it. Hell, that's what I would do.
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