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.