People Photos

Here's a few recent pictures of the people around here. Also, if you didn't see my (late) update for sunday, go scroll down some to see a bunch of rattie pictures. :)


L holding Lu Bu:
(Yep, that's a new computer in the background! That's not the only new thing, too. See if you can spot the others!)

Here's the basket of ratties:
I think only two or three are in the basket, but at one point I managed to get nearly all of them. However, it's really tough to actually get a picture of that when they're wiggling like crazy. Speaking of that, here's a picture of me holding the basket:
And there you have it, recent pictures!

Funny Ratties

Here's what happens when I try to take a picture of the ratties:

See? They love having their pictures taken so much that they just have to hop on my lap and try to help with it! This actually happens a whole lot, get too happy taking pictures and they run up and try to inspect the lens close up. Also, you may notice the rat-tail phenomenon in this picture: even your best pictures tend to end up with a random rat's tail in them. If you're trying to get a picture of just a single rat, it's usually just the tail that you got, so you know a good picture when you get something besides just that.

Here's what happens when you try to read a book in bed while the ratties are playing:

Actually, it's surprising they are so stationary in this picture. It's actually because they were each given a treat. It's amazing what that will do to a rat's mobility, they just stop and eat!

Speaking of mobility, here's Scotty, who loves to chew holes in towels. This time, he's discovered a possible issue with chewing a hole in the towel:

Uhoh! He got horribly stuck. I actually tried to help extricate him from it, but he wasn't very happy with me helping so I let him work out the problem. He eventually made it out, luckily:

Finally, there's a pose that the rats all use, but it's really tough to get a picture of. I finally got one tonight though, this only happens when they're resting, they just lie down and flatten out, it's terribly cute. Usually when you try to get a picture of it they perk up and come see what you were doing, but this time I happened to be right next to the camera and didn't alert Blue before taking the picture. I only got one try though, it's lucky it did turn out:

Bread: Entertainment Value High

The ratties got an afternoon snack today. I ended up with a single extra slice of bread after making sandwiches, and since it was the end of the loaf I figured the rats would probably enjoy it much more than I would. It turns out that I probably enjoyed it nearly as much!

The rats were all sleeping, it being around 2pm or so. I ripped up the bread into four pieces, all quite big, and then took a bit off one of those to offer to Barrick, who seemed the most awake. Then put the other pieces in the cage. Barrick immediately was interested and happily munched away. Scotty and Lu Bu woke up from where they were sleeping on the main level (inside the yellow thing (tm)) and grabbed large pieces. Blue emerged from the hideout on the top floor and took another one of the large pieces (a single one now remaining) and all of them scattered. Blue back up to the hideout, and the others to whatever corner they could find. Blue managed to alert Cao Cao to the presence of food, as Cao Cao was sleeping in the hideout, but after unsuccessfully trying to steal Blue's piece, he ended up going down and finding the largest slice of bread and taking that. No, I don't know why the others didn't take the largest piece. I guess they just were so happy to see it at all that they didn't care.

Anyways, this was all very interesting, but not especially entertaining until Scotty decided that instead of eating, it was time to stash his piece of bread. So he trundles down to the bottom of the cage and puts the piece of bread into the tissue box there. Looks around a few times, then goes back up to the main floor and... takes Lu Bu's bread! And he runs off down the ramp and stashes that in the box too. Naturally Lu Bu decides that he needs more bread, and starts trying to take Blue and Cao Cao's pieces but failing. Scotty comes back up the ramp and immediately manages a perfect steal on Cao Cao's piece! Back down the ramp he goes and stashes that into the box. Barrick has now finished his small piece and so he, Cao Cao and Lu Bu are running around frantically trying to find their missing bread! Blue has fortified the hideout and is generally sneaky so they don't notice he's still got a rather large piece. I was cheering for Scotty to steal the last piece as well, but he couldn't make it past Blue's defenses and instead the rest of the rat squad ransacked the tissue box and removed all the carefully stashed pieces of bread. Alas, a hiding place is never safe from hungry ratties!

Determination

The rats went to the vet today. They were very naughty. They tried to escape being weighed, but were not successful, and so they are going to have to go on a diet, Lu Bu and Scotty being a bit overweight, and the rest being on the high end of normal.

But what I actually wanted to say about the visit to the vet was that I really admire our veterinarian. She was a little late after we got into the waiting room (her previous appointment went long), but apologized and went right about examining the whole crew of rats. Very positive and calm, even when Cao Cao and Blue were naughty during their examinations, and that was pretty impressive.

Rattie Update!

Okay, time for an update on how the ratties are doing. First off, they are very sleepy. We've been told that rats should calm down and nap more as they get older. I'm not sure if it's just that these guys have a wider range of sleepiness or if they are actually just more relaxed. In any case, here's one of the better pictures of them sleeping:

Yes, that's Blue in the wheel, completely asleep. Cao Cao and Scotty are underneath the water bottle, also asleep. It's a favorite place to hang out. No, I don't know why. Could be the only place to get a drink in their town. In any case, I was hoping to get a better picture of Blue sleeping in the wheel, so naturally I opened the cage door:

Just fooling! We're not really asleep now that you've come to play with us! This ALWAYS happens, they can be the most adorable sleepy rats and I just want to sit one on my lap while I'm working on the computer, and BAM, full of energy soon as the cage door is opened. Oh well.

So a few days ago I got worried that Cao Cao managed to escape the cage, as he's been known to do so even with the doors closed and the top on. I thought this because I checked the cage and only saw the four rats pictured in this photo (taken around that time):
I ran around the house hunting him, called up L and asked if she'd seen him earlier, and finally went to get the yogurt drops as a last resort hunting method. I pull them off the shelf and shake a few times to make sure there are some left. Look over at the cage, the four rats are paying VERY close attention to me now, and then I see Cao Cao peek out of the hammock shown in the photo (on the right). What? I don't know, I saw the hammock but it looked like it was empty, and even looked in the sides (though not with the cage open). Anyways, he's in the hammock in the picture above, and the other four are shown in the picture. Yes. See that spot of grey-blue fur under Lu Bu's nose? That's Blue. He's being sat upon and was barely visible from any angle.

Another day recently, I got a mad gleam in my eye as I suggested that it was time to let the rats play (talking to L), while we were out in the living room. She immediately thought I had an Evil Plan (tm) to grab all the empty Dr Pepper 12-pack boxes and make a rattie fort. Actually, I'm not sure what I was thinking, but her plan was excellent, so I did that. Here it is:

It's got a total of four openings, the two you can see in the near area, and there are rattie heads poking out of the two in the back. The box on top is connected to the right side arm via a hole which the rats definately can use, which I was a bit worried about. They definitely like the castle, so it will stay around for a bit until it gets too chewed on, etc.

Anyways, that's about it for recent rat stories, so here's one last picture to finish up the post. This is Blue, being super-cute as usual:

Who's the...

... cutest rat to ever set foot in a Jamba Juice box? Blue is!
There's actually a great sequence of rats hopping in and out of this box, but this photo in particular I really like, for the expression on Blue's face. Here's a close-up version:

Super cute! Anyways, I actually copied photos off the camera, which is why I have this one. Still need to sort though, there were ~230 photos copied off, all new.

Rattie Update

The ratties say hi, approximately. Or at least, two of the keys they have stepped on today were 'h' and 'i', and thus they clearly meant for me to say hi to you all.

Other things they want passed on: They would like food donations. No, don't look at me like that. I know they are growing ratties, but even so I think they always want food donations. Even if they just had some wonderful stale chips, fortune cookies and other healthy snacks donated to them. They'll just stash it. They get lots of nutritional food too, but it gets eaten last. Except for the green leafy things which get happily dragged all over the cage until a spot is found where clearly none of the others will be able to take it.

The rats moved, which isn't surprising considering that L and I swapped which room was the bedroom. There's now a very nice table and couches setup in the old bedroom, which has yet to see use as a board game/rpg room, but which should serve pretty well once we do have a gaming night. The rats were horribly confused when allowed to run around in the new room, as all their usual hideouts were gone. They have taken to the closet doorway though, sitting on there and staring into the room, as well as generally climbing around the desk as usual.

Oh, and there might be pictures of the new stuff, but I have suffered a massive inertial attack courtesy of the camera and finding the cable to plug it in, so don't hold your breath. I think there are even pictures on there which were from the now fabled (well, not really) teaser post's intended ending point.

Sleeping Ratties

And now, your regular rattie update! Or not so regular, but at least it's here.

The rats have been doing very well. With the new desk, we moved the cage around so it's a lot closer to the desks and it's easier to say hi to them. They've also been getting out on a regular basis, which appears to make them happy, though they are causing all sorts of trouble. Their latest game is to pull everything off the one remaining shelf (on the desk), so they have room to hide in the cubbyholes. This is very cute, and horribly annoying as there are occasionally crashing noises as they knock something off, and we always worry that the rat fell with.

They have also been very cute while sleeping. I think the temperature is a bit hot for them, even with the AC running, and so when they curl up to sleep they flop over on one side so their belly gets cooled too. It's adorable, but I haven't been able to get a picture of it yet because they always perk up when I bring the camera near. Guess they're only mostly asleep.

We've also found a great way to round them all up. Opening the door to the hallway works like a charm, any of them near that can see it will immediately run straight for the door, and they try to make it through before we can close it. I usually bring one or two with on my shoulder for whatever I was going to do outside the bedroom, but they get bored with that after a while.

Rat Antics

The rats have had a slightly longer time out of the cage today than usual, and so there are several moments which I will collect here that stick out.

Unusually, we let the rats play some during the afternoon. They are very sleepy during the afternoon and usually snooze the whole time, so when the cage got opened they approached it with some trepidity, or perhaps laziness. L managed to coax most of them out to go exploring, but even with some vigorous coaxing Lu Bu decided to remain sleeping in the cage. He eventually came out later, but it was clear that we were not going to interrupt his nap and he would emerge on his own terms.

2
(I don't know how Cao Cao managed to type 2 and enter on the numeric keypad as he walked across it, but since that appears to fit, I'm going to leave it.)

Also during the afternoon, Scotty demonstrated an amazing leap, as he jumped from the floor to the top of a bag of bedding, which is a good 2 feet or so off the floor. It really surprised L, who was watching them nearby.

After returning to their cage as we were about to head off to the baseball game, Patty came by to say hi to the ratties. They did their usual thing, and stacked up in the corner, three noses high. If you have ever seen the rats pile up, it was an especially cute pile in the corner presenting all three's noses towards Patty, even lining them up nicely.

Later in the evening after we got back, there were several other incidents. Cao Cao decided that my baseball cap sitting on the desk was a very good thing to hide inside. He sort of shuffled around with it, and I tried to catch a picture of him poking his head out of the back (where he'd entered). He seemed to like it, but while moving around he also seemed to want to knock the hat off the desk with him inside it. This was narrowly averted, but it looked like he was eager to try it again, so I moved the hat.

Scotty got to play shoulder rat and see what L was doing in the living room. Scotty was pretty good about this, but eventually got bored while watching L play guitar hero 2, and he was dropped off in the room and given a treat. At which point Lu Bu hopped on my foot, and looked up at me - "My Turn! I want treats too! Take me on a shoulder trip!". So he got to visit the living room as well. He is much more well-behaved, and didn't try to hop off the shoulder until after the song finished.

Lu Bu also starred in the twitching rat encounter today. He loves to sit on the desk in between my monitors, next to a speaker and the speaker control box thingie. This is coincidentally the one clear spot on the desk which has the air conditioner blowing directly on it. We refer to him sitting there like so: "Lu Bu's chilling again." The funny thing about this is that he seems to have a really weird nervous reaction while sitting there. Barrick came up to him and preened some of the hair on his back, but when he did this, Lu Bu's tail would twitch madly! I'd seen this happen before, but it's always really crazy. If he gets preened while sitting in front of the AC, his tail twitches like mad. Doesn't happen anywhere else. If I pet him behind the neck while he's sitting there, it'll sometimes happen as well. Really weird.

Speaking of Lu Bu, he tried to escape with the Mac OSX cd case today, lugging it halfway along the shelf and into a cubby hole. Not sure if he had a computer in the cubby hole he wanted to install it on, he got bored after reaching that destination and went off elsewhere.

Barrick decided to balance and pose for me today. Seated on top of a huge plastic container on the top shelf, just under the Much Ado poster. I haven't checked to see if those pictures have turned out yet.

Finally, Blue has been very quiet today, and so I don't really have any stories about him. He did try to steal a leftover peanut from Lu Bu, but didn't appear to be successful at it. I just went over to ask him if he had done anything interesting today - "No comment." I suspect I should go see what trouble he's been into quietly. He did organize a ratty gang, after I found him to see what he'd been up to, he hopped onto my shoulder, along with Lu Bu, Cao Cao and Barrick, and they ran around a bit then hopped back off.

Messier and Messier

Today's excursion by the rats was cut short when Scotty discovered his favorite dirt pile, which neither L or I have had a chance to clean up and make rat proof. I didn't notice this for a while though, because Barrick, Lu Bu and Cao Cao were running diversionary tactics all over my keyboard and lap.

Potential Mess

A while back L was growing some plants, and so we have a bag of potting soil that was used for said endeavor. Given the size of our apartment, and the lack of a convenient gardening shed or the like, storing the bag of potting soil is something of an issue. Luckily, the shelves in the bedroom had been cleared of all their comics/books, which are now neatly organized in the living room, and so there was empty space for the bag of potting soil.

I once read that rats really like to play in dirt, digging and tunneling. I'm pretty sure that is correct, based on observational evidence. Scotty was a mess, with dirt everywhere on his nose, whiskers and paws. I tried to help him clean up, but he seemed rather more annoyed that he wasn't allowed to play in the dirt any longer, instead of being properly grateful. Oh well.



In other news, we went to Din Tai Fung (which I'm sure I have mangled the spelling of) for dinner tonight. It is a dumpling place east of here, near the racetrack, and we've been there a few times before. It was very delicious, but this isn't a review (perhaps I will write one later?), instead I wanted to mention that we had exactly one dumpling left over, which was a red bean dessert dumpling. It got brought home and we let the rats have at it, and took pictures. I haven't looked at them yet, but maybe the next post will be about it, if they're good.

Rat Guide

This is a quick guide to our new rats, with a photo of each, plus special bonus pictures at the end!

This is Barrick:
He has found a quiet place to hide where none of the other ratties would dare bother him. Unfortunately, it is in the clothes hamper, and thus the humans have found him and are hoping he did not chew on any towels.

Next we have Blue:
He is checking our router settings and all the cables, making sure none of them are chewed on or otherwise rendered unusable.

Next we have Cao Cao:
Cao Cao is being a good photo-rat and is posing on my shoulder as I take his picture in the mirror. This photo shoot turned out so well that it inspired one of the later pictures.

Here we have Lu Bu:
He is clearly exhausted from keeping the other rats in line, and thus is laying down for a nap. Conveniently, this is right next to the door, so if someone should come in or out he will have a perfect chance to scoot out the door after them.

Finally, Scotty:
"It's a mirror! If I jump high enough I can see myself!" For some reason the rats really liked the mirror, I sat down near it and that caused them to investigate. While doing so, several of them tried jumping up into the mirror, as I'm guessing it looked like a ledge they could hang on to. I have no idea how I got lucky enough to take this picture.

Finally, we have some bonus pictures. These were inspired by my earlier attempts to photograph ratties in the mirror. First we have Cao Cao, who was actually quite calm and interested in that rat he saw in the mirror.

Lu Bu decided to investigate the mirror as well, but he didn't get a lift, so his view was a lot worse. Great shot of all his whiskers, though!
And finally we have a group photo, all the ratties clustered around my toes while I was working on taking pictures in the mirror. This one turned out really well, I'm not sure how I got the lighting to work, as the tones are very nice and non-flashy, but the rats are very in focus which isn't very common when not using the flash.

And that's it. I did some cropping on most of these photos, and on the first five there's obviously some changing of brightness, I was experimenting to see if it would draw attention better to the rats, while still giving an idea of their surroundings. I'm happy with some of those ones, but I'm not as sure about others, I think the effect is better used on only a few (Cao Cao, Barrick, Blue's turned out well. Not as sure about Lu Bu or Scotty's). The last ones were only cropped, they turned out good.

Lap Rat?

Two little events to write about today, both about the rats. The first is that the moon aligned with Earth, Mars and all of Jupiter's moons, and when I went to put all the rats back into their cage after their daily time out, they were all already in the cage. This is probably not as unlikely an occurence as the moon alignment mentioned above (which could very well be impossible), but it's certainly the first time I've ever seen it. Usually at most one or two will be in the cage when they are allowed to run around, but this time I saw three in the cage when I went to put them back, and it turned out that I was just not seeing the other two in there (Scotty was in the wheel, and Blue was blending in).

The other interesting thing is that we may finally have one of those fabled rats who like to just sit around in one's lap. The so-called lap rat we've long thought was a myth - we've always been told that the male rats are a lot calmer than female rats, and are usually much better lap rats, but up to this point none of our rats have liked sitting still long enough for us to actually call them a lap rat before they have left the vicinity of said lap. Today, however, it appeared that Lu Bu may be the first of our rats to actually qualify. He's already very social and likes to be near L and I, and today he hopped into my lap while I was using the computer, and sat there for a while. I even petted him a bit, which is usually cause for the quick evacuation of wherever they may be sitting, but he took that in stride as an opportunity to help give my fingers a manicure. This was quite ticklish, but appreciated on my part, even though I really needed both hands to type at the time. He eventually got bored of the lap and ran off, but it's definately the longest I've seen, and I suspect as he gets older he'll be calmer and sit still longer.

Tired

Today was a long day. Lots of stuff done and to do, but managed to not stress out completely. I think that counts as a win in the grand scheme of things, though I'm hoping it doesn't leave me too tired for tomorrow, given how late I'm up.

Anyways, a few short stories today, mostly about the ratties. I did take lots of pictures, but haven't the time to check them out, crop and post them here. Maybe tomorrow for that. In any case, they did do some rather cute things today.

I had chow mein for dinner. This seemed like a good idea, I like noodles with assorted vegetables and beef. I suspect the problem was not actually in the choice of meals, but the environment in which I ate. That would be while sitting on the floor of the bedroom, trying to keep track of where all the little rats were running, while L was working on cleaning their cage. On the one hand, eating dinner while sitting on the floor did make it a lot easier to keep track of all the rats: they were all climbing over me, trying to figure out what the great smell was. The worst it got was with Cao Cao, who is small enough and daring enough to climb all the way up my arm and onto the back of the hand that was holding the fork I was trying to eat with. I think he had this grand plan, of reaching the hand and then making a dive into the chow mein and eating all that he could. Sadly for him, that plan was thwarted by the distraction of being offered a noodle if he would only leave my hand alone so that I could eat. On the whole, though, I think the dinner was enjoyable, as there is something really cute about the way the rats eat noodles.

I have come to the conclusion that our rats like us. Or maybe just people in general, or it could just be that anyone moving around attracts their interest. I suspect it's more than just the latter though, as some non-person movement can really startle them. When we let them play in the room, inevitably there will always be at least one or two near us, if not climbing around directly on us. Lu Bu, Blue and Scotty seem to be the most friendly and generally more likely to hang out. Cao Cao tends to always be off getting into trouble, though he has been known to hang out on the keyboard tray under L's monitor. Barrick tends to hide the most, as usual. I've also been teaching them to come when called, right now just a general call for all of them, as teaching them individually is a royal pain. It works pretty well, of the three times I called them tonight there was a 4 rat average response. Lu Bu and Blue in particular make a beeline straight for me, usually on an accessible path. Scotty, on the other hand, tries to reach the call from wherever he is, which today led to an amusing scene with him sitting on top of the clothes hamper on my chair, while I was sitting at the foot of the bed. He stared for a while, trying to figure out how to reach me, before I reached out to let him climb across.

Head over Heels

I spent a decent bit of time today doing some writing for work, so this post is going to be a little short today. In honor of it being a short post, I'm going to pass along a few amusing incidents with the ratties, for those interested in such things.

This afternoon I went to give Lu Bu his medicine as usual, and all the ratties were dozing off as they usually do in the afternoon. This is usually a pretty cool thing to have the dozing ratties, as one of the cutest sights is to see a rat yawn as they wake up. Today was no exception, as several rats did wake up as I fed Lu Bu his medicine. Barrick, however, managed to top all the rest in the yawn department. He meandered over to where I was feeding Lu Bu, over the ramp, poked his nose over the ramp and did a gigantic yawn as he somersaulted off the edge and down the ramp. He picked himself up on the landing below the ramp and did a quick look around to make sure he wasn't spotted, and then went back to napping. L and I were laughing at the sight, we've never seen quite that spectacular a yawn.

Rats like large objects. This seems to be a universal truth, evidenced tonight during rattie play time. L had several sheets of paper sitting on the desk adjacent to her, at some point one of these got knocked onto the floor (likely by the rats). Blue found the paper first, and immediately grabbed it and started trying to take it to the closet, where the rat cage is. Note that this is a full 8.5" by 11" sheet of paper, a lot larger than the rat, so they carry it by grabbing an edge and hopping along. Hopefully while not standing on the paper, or they have a tug of war with themselves while trying to move it. After Blue got the paper to the closet, he seemed happy and wandered off. Next up was Scotty, who found the paper by the closet and immediately decided it was a rare and wonderful object, and carried it back halfway across the room and hid it under the clothes hamper. He showed it off to several admiring rats, Lu Bu and Barrick, who came to investigate it, but eventually all three wandered off. After sufficient time had passed, though, Lu Bu came back for it and carried it off yet again, this time to behind a box on the lowest shelves in the room. So far it appears to be safely hidden there, but only time will tell if it will remain there.

Oh, and on a side note, today was our second wedding anniversary. As usual it was a spectacular day, filled with all sorts of special events and presents. (Translated: we went out to dinner at Zono Sushi, that's about it) ^^

Lord Cao Cao

Finally we arrive at the post for the fifth rattie, the smallest but not the least, Cao Cao. Cao Cao was the first named, along with Lu Bu, for he was a mighty rat even though he was also really really small, with Lu Bu weighing in at nearly 50% more. He's still the smallest rat, but he's also the most active one as well.

We got a nifty rat wheel, featured in this picture:
It's an enclosed wheel, with the openings on the opposite side from that seen in this picture. Playing nearby are Blue and Scotty, with Lu Bu watching. All new things you introduce the ratties to naturally brings a certain amount of skepticism from them, which usually means that eagerly waiting to see how they will interact with a new thing usually brings disappointment as they ignore it. Cao Cao, however, figured out right away exactly what the rat wheel was for and immediately ran like crazy in it. And ran like crazy when we were trying to get to sleep, and then taught the rest of them how to run like crazy on it so that they could continue running while we tried to sleep even after Cao Cao got tired.

Here we have a good picture of Cao Cao:


He's a siamese coloring, which is basically a pure white with grey-brown hints on the ears, nose and tail. He's also the only one with the red eyes, the rest having the more usual black eyes.

To round out this description of Cao Cao and his personality, we have a photographic sequence, which I'll just notate with various bits about him. (Does anyone know how to make stuff on blogger appear only after a link? "below the fold" as it's usually called. I'd like to do that with the extra pictures here so it doesn't get too weighty.)

Cao Cao is a natural acrobat:
Yep, that's a three feet on the cage, one foot on the clothes hamper, getting set to jump over.

If you start taking pictures of rats, they come to see what all the flash is about.

But sometimes they get distracted and instead show off their balancing skills.

The next sequence shows off a particular trait we've seen in the ratties: they get into trouble. For some background, L went to a huge amount of trouble to buy some really nice cable organizers to stow all the power cables, network cables, etc, to keep them out of the way of the rats (who like to chew), so that we could at times let them run around the bedroom. Naturally, this doesn't work terribly well, as evidenced by the following behavior:
"Who, me? Play on the neatly organized cables?"
"Ok, enough posing for the camera. Now, what can I do while I'm up here?"
"I wonder where this cable goes?"
"This looks promising." (This is actually how he got over there, that black cable his front paws are resting on is the power cord from one of my monitors, he climbed over on top of it.)
"Changed my mind, it's climbing time again!"
"You know, this place looks pretty familiar. Where should I go from here?"

He actually did several loops around like that and then used the power cord to climb back over to the desk. I think he just likes the climbing around. Of course, once he arrived on the desk, this is what happens next:
After an exhausting trip, he naturally had to have a Dr. Pepper. I'm just glad he didn't try to drag it off with him. There you have it: Cao Cao, adventure-rat.

Ship's Engineer

And now, the fourth in the series about our new ratties. This time starring Scotty, the illustrious engineer.

Scotty was named such because we didn't want to name him Sun Quan, for fear of the archers. Or at least, that makes a better story for how he got named that. Sun Quan was tossed around as a name for one of them, since we already had Cao Cao and Lu Bu, but we decided that Sun Quan would be entirely too much of a handful. "Spotty" was tossed around as a possible name for Scotty, as he is black with white spotted patches, but it didn't stick and Scotty was used instead.

He's sometimes hard to tell from Lu Bu as they are both black and white, but Scotty has much less white on him overall, and very small spots, where Lu Bu has a gigantic white blaze on the forehead. Scotty is also the second largest of the rats, starting out a decent bit smaller than Lu Bu but he's been trying to catch up since. Scotty is the mountain climber of the group. No peak is too tall for him. His default direction of travel is upwards.

At this point, Barrick tried to help write the description of Scotty. L says: "He's probably going to put propaganda like 'pees on his food'" Bad Barrick, go hide in the corner.

Anyways, Scotty is very energetic and interested and tends to always be exploring and finding higher spots to climb to. He's pretty calm as far as petting goes, but has a low threshold for duration and will start squirming pretty quickly. He doesn't seem the dominant type either, not really going out of his way to tussle with any of the others, but he doesn't do badly when he does.

Finally, a pictorial comparison of Scotty and Lu Bu, to assist in telling them apart:













This is Scotty! He is being very annoyed at me for holding him still for this picture.














This is Lu Bu. A bit darker of a picture but the difference in coloring on the forehead is really apparent when comparing this to the previous one.

Brooding Prince

That would be Barrick, one of our rats. It could possibly refer to my mood today, which was terribly bad. Not far any good reason, just felt like I got nowhere except in planning stuff out at work, kept getting interrupted in whatever I was doing and nothing I did want to do turned out well. Except the Braves game, which we won vs the Mets, that'd be the good bit. Though I had to miss about half of it for group meeting.

Anyways, going to briefly talk about Barrick and his personality. He's very distinctively marked - mostly white, with a black ring around the neck, and some mottled black splotches elsewhere. This type is usually called possum marked, or possum hooded. He's right in the middle as far as weight goes, being around 310g.

Barrick doesn't like being around people. Or rats. Or anything, really. He's the most antisocial of the bunch and will dart away from hands that might want to pet him. When placed on a shoulder, he'll leap down. Doesn't care about safety, just wants to get away. This hasn't really changed much even though we try to pet him a lot and get him more well adjusted. He will hang out with the other rats and usually is one of the ones sleeping in a pile, but occasionally when they are all awake he'll be the one off in a completely different part of the cage pretending to nap. He does tussle with the others a decent bit, and I've been trying to figure out if he's ending up as the dominant rat. Probably not so far, but it's possible.

A good example of Barrick's shyness is the story from the previous post. Yep, he's the one who didn't even escape the cage after a door had been left open. He was probably happy to be left alone by the rest. Barrick does have a favorite thing to do though: burrow in the blankets/sheets. He will spend long stretches of time sneaking around under the blankets, only to poke his nose out in a completely unexpected spot to see whether anything interesting is going on outside. Not that he tends to go out, but he will get interested sometimes, at least as long as we're very careful to not startle him back into the covers. He is a very picky eater, and does not like taking medicine unless it's really diluted with some food he likes (usually sweet potato baby food). Lastly, Barrick was named for a moody prince in the Tad Williams series Shadowmarch (i'd just read the second book in the series, Shadowplay), mainly because he shares many of the same traits with that prince.

Potent Personalities for 200, Alex

Today's entry is a short one, but likely to be continued over the next day or three. I've been thinking about our new rats and their personalities, which leads to thinking about personality in general. So, let me tell you (the hypothetical reader) about the personality I've seen in our new rats, and perhaps once I finish describing them I may talk about the other thoughts.

Actually, I should mention one here. In a recent discussion about mental concepts of people (as in, what I think about particular people), I mentioned that I tended to store aggregated information - strengths, weaknesses, probable behavior in situations, that sort of thing. Another interesting approach to the same mental concept was to remember particular events involving that person, and when needing to make some conclusion about behavior to extrapolate from the remembered events. I find it interesting to note the two different ways, as in preparing to write about the rats I find that while I think of them as having particular attitudes and personalities, illustrating those to another person it feels more concrete if I can relate a story which exhibits those characteristics.

For this post, let me tell you about Lu Bu, the oldest of the five rats we recently adopted. First, the physical facts: he weighs about 360g, which is nearly 50% more than the lightest one (Cao Cao), and about 20% more than the average. So he's a big one, noticeably larger than Cao Cao. Very easy to distinguish as he has a large white blaze on his nose and forehead, and otherwise very smooth black fur with a white belly. I'll post a picture when I figure out how/where to post one.

Lu Bu got his name on the way home (as did all of them, though we weren't sure of some for a day or two), for he was the biggest and most demanding at the time. If there was food, he wanted it, but it couldn't just be left for him - someone had to hold it so that he could eat it with the appropriate style. It turns out that he's not really very combative (the rats tend to try and establish dominance by pushing the others over and grooming them), and I rarely see him actually start a fight, though he does tend to get picked on by the smaller ones (i.e. all of them). He is also the calmest around people, which is not to say that he will just sit around, but he seems to not mind petting and grooming, and tends not to get skittish. That said, he's also pretty fearless (I hesitate to say the most fearless, as Cao Cao seems to have a lock on that, but he's close). For instance, one day recently L had the ratties out of the cage and when putting them back in didn't notice that the lower door was unlatched and open. This was discovered a while later when Lu Bu revealed his presence in the living room couch, which L was sitting on. That is quite a distance from the cage, and our other rats have always been afraid of the hallway, as it is a long open space with nowhere to hide. For comparison, in the same time Cao Cao was playing in the clothes on the floor by the bed, Scotty and Blue were hanging out on top of the cage (having climbed the exterior), and Barrick was still inside the cage, just chilling. Or perhaps he hadn't noticed the door was open, or maybe didn't care.

Lu Bu appeared to get sick about a week after we'd brought the rats home, with a respiratory ailment of some kind (very common for rodents) that made him sound like a motorboat at times. He's now been to the vet and is on the usual combination of medications for it and sounds a whole lot better. I had thought perhaps he was calmer because he was having trouble breathing, but even with it sounding clearer now he's still rather calm - tonight, when the ratties were getting their medicine, he and Cao Cao had the privilege of getting to visit me on the couch while L tried to give the others their medicine. Which, translated, means that they were getting into trouble and probably trying to steal the medicine from the others. Cao Cao naturally was bounding all over the couch and trying his best to escape and play on the scrapbooking table. Lu Bu on the other hand explored for a while and ended up figuring out that he could climb down the sleeve of my shirt (long-sleeved, it was cold today). He happily played in there for quite a while, sometimes just sitting at the end of the sleeve, his head poking out just under my hand, and watching what was going on outside (pretty much nothing, I was attempting to read and trying to keep Cao Cao off the table). Very calm and he appeared to like the spot he'd found and was happy to sit there for a while.

So, what personality would I call Lu Bu? Friendly, exploratory, calm. Unafraid to win a fight when provoked, but not a bully.