Walnuts are rat heroin.  I don't know who knew, but they didn't tell me, and the discovery has been keeping me entertained all week.

Let me backtrack.

About a week ago, HT bought Joy a couple of pet rats.  A black and white, and a little white and blonde.  A pair of males.  Only, in true family form they weren't both quite as male as the pet shop represented.  I used to keep a rat at Uni, and am familiar in the way of the rat, and confirmed that one was male.  The other, however, wasn't. 

The discovery process inevitably led to me handling the rats, and remembering the pleasure of being scampered over by little ratty toes, and having a softly whispering companion on my shoulder.  Dan and Daisy, too, were taken with the rat love.  And so it was decided that we would take the female rat.

Only I had to get a cage, so HT and Joy would bring her over the next day.  And of course, rats are social animals, preferring to live in groups.  So a couple more girls slipped into the cage on the way out of the store.  And so we brought Fidget and Slipper home.  They weren't deliberately named to sound like East End post-war gangsters, but I confess I'm quite pleased with the splat gun sound of those names.  And later that evening, Rascal came to join them.

Socialising rats can take a little time.  They need to get used to your smell and are often tentative in their first approach.  That's what the owner's manual said, anyway.  Fidget, though, had failed to read the manual and made a bee line for my hands as soon as she was settled in her cage.  She is a confident little thing, and Slipper follows her lead only slightly more tentatively.  Rascal, though, is taking her time, keeping herself a little more withdrawn.  We aren't sure whether this is because she's obviously younger than the other two and an outsider to boot, or whether her unfortunate gender identity error has resulted in a pregnancy.

Anyway, while Dan and Daisy were away over half term, I've made a point of spending half an hour or so with the rats every evening.  One evening, I took a handful of chopped walnuts with me.  As usual, as soon as the door was opened, Fidget made a bee line.  She likes to climb onto my hand, and up my arm, investigating whatever I'm wearing, looking in pockets, smelling my hair and generally taking account of where I've been and what I've been doing since last she was there.  She's not a sit on the shoulder and chatter rat, she's more an explore, log and move on kinda gal.  Only this day, I had the walnuts.  She ran to my hand, as usual.  Paused.  Sniffed.  Picked up a walnut delicately in her mouth.  Held it between her two front paws and gave a tentative nibble.  Stuffed it into her cheek, and raced to the far corner of the cage.  Seeing this, Slipper came to see what was what, and repeated the exercise so far.  Meanwhile, Fidget was racing back to the cage door, apparently intent on breaking the rat land speed record.  She snatched another walnut, and raced back to the corner of the cage.  While Slipper was greedily grabbing her second, I watched Fidget spit the walnut out, spin round and race back.  This went on, the two of them grabbing, running, spitting out, wheeling round and racing back in relay until all the walnuts were gone.  Then the girls composed themselves, ran up my arms, and had a sniff and a chat.  When I went back into the room 20 minutes later, the walnuts were all eaten.

When HT got home, I wanted to show him this extraordinary behaviour.  So I took another handful of walnuts.  This time, when I opened the cage door, Fidget jumped to the ledge of it, sniffed my hand eagerly, stuffed *three* walnut pieces into her mouth and sprinted to the corner with them.  Slipper was less interested in this handful, so Fidget was left to her own devices, cramming as much walnut as she could into her mouth, sprinting round the cage, and depositing them safely for later consumption.  The entire exercise was conducted at the highest of high speeds, and obviously caused much ratty excitement!

I haven't shown the children the trick, yet.  I may keep it a secret, just to protect my ability to make coffee and walnut cake...

Comments

[Jeanette]

Awww, you've brought back fond memories of the pet rat I had in college. She was a sit on my shoulder under my hair and chatter kind of rat.