Holy Schmoley

[neithersparky]

So I brought a (live) rat home yesterday for Duchess. First of all, it turned out this is one sick rat. I guess it has an upper respiratory infection, because it just lies there and has coughing fits occasionally. Secondly, Duchess didn't want it. Or *something*. She didn't emerge from her tree until after I had turned the lights off, and then I

Comments

[maddogairpirate]

Send it to me. And there's always feeding it frozen prekilled rats... less suffering on the rat's part.

[neithersparky]

I feed her both prekilled and live, she takes either indiscriminately. The pet store near me rarely has frozen rats in the small size, so sometimes I have to buy the live ones. I'd like to order a box of them from a website but as I'm not home all day I dunno if they can send me something frozen, and I don't exactly want to have dead rodents shipped to my workplace and kept in our breakroom freezer. ;)

[maddogairpirate]

It'd fix those blasted microwave people real quick, I can tell you that. ;-)

[neithersparky]

LOL!!!

It's still going on. I'm starting to get a little creeped by the microwave display, I feel like I'm in a M. Night Shamalayan movie...

[keeperofdreams]

Sounds like the rat has myco, a respiratory all too common in ratties. all rats are born with it, but in some it flares up until it sounds like they've got a nasty cold bug, which is what seems like is wrong with your rat. I'm not sure if it'll hurt your snake any (snakes are one of the few critters I don't own!), but as for what you can do for the rat, you can try putting tetracycline in its water to see if that helps lessen things, or you can just bonk it over the head and kill it, then find out if your snake can eat it.

(Sounds mean, but I have ratties of my own, and if you take it back to a pet store they're just gonna axe it anyhow.)

[neithersparky]

Thank you. :) Yeah I thought about killing it but I hoped to never have to do that. :P I may just put it back in there tonight or tomorrow if it doesn't die before then. Or maybe I'll try making it better, but if I do that I think I'll have to put up flyers or something around the apartment complex trying to find it a home because I don't think I could send it to the gallows after curing it! :) Lol.

[keeperofdreams]

Well, rats can live with myco for a good time, long as it doesn't get really bad. Vets can also treat 'em for it, and depending on the vet it's not that costly. I think my vet visit was around $60 for my one rat, which wasn't bad at all.

But yeah, try finding a home for it, and if that doesn't work where you are, there's always ratties or rattie_adoption to help you find a home for the little rodent. ^_^ If you do post there, though, might wanna let 'em know that the rat may have myco, so any interested parties don't put 'em together with healthy ratties.

Good luck! :)