Shhh...Don't Tell

For most of my life, up until about a week ago, I have had this icky, gross feeling towards rats. Maybe it is because of the destructive ability that wild, loose rats tend to have on your things. Or maybe it is that nasty, long, squirmy tail, which again, up until about a week ago, made me go into the immediate, squirmish body shake where you jump up and down, shaking your arms and squealing as loud as possible to make the point that there is an icky little creature loose and you want to have nothing to do with it, except maybe to help set out traps in order to rid the world of one more rodent. YUCK!

My wonderful husband, has very different views on SOME animals than I do and has forever tried to convince me that domesticated rats make terrific pets. They are clean. Nope. And loyal. Nope. And very sweet. Nope. Nope. Nope!!!! He had one as a child and to this day claims it was the best pet he's ever had. And he's had a lot of pets in his lifetime. He even convinced my children that they were ok, and they would want to hold one every time we entered the pet shop that my mother-n-law owns and Chad currently works at. Again, YUCK!

Well, Chad set out to start breeding rats at the store in order to sell them and he found himself a "dumbo" male and a sweet (did I say sweet?) female and they ended up having babies. 7 babies to be exact. Ouch! I suppose any living thing that can birth 7 babies at one sitting should be given some praise! :) The kids (and Chad) were so excited about the "pinkies" that were born on July 21st and although I was still in the grossed out phase, I thought they were ok.

About 2 weeks after the babies were born, the momma started getting sick. Chad noticed that she just wasn't herself and wasn't eating/drinking as much and would just lay there. He tried to nurse her back to health, but it just didn't work. Unfortunately, and sadly, he lost the momma.

By this time, the babies had started getting fur on them and were actually so dead-gum cute that I had to hold one. Bad idea...that was all it took. I was sunk and totally in love. I suppose I used the excuse that they really needed a mom to adopt them since they were still so young and lost theirs, but somehow, someway, I became ok with them and wanted to bring them home to continue caring for them until they were old enough to sell.

See, that's where the problem comes in....bringing the babies home means I have to bring the babies into my mother's house, where we are living. She is like 10 times worse at the squimish thing with any sort of rodent....PERIOD. So, I called Dad. :) heehee!

To my surprise, he reluctantly gave us his approval, but he knew "nothing about it!" Now, we just need to figure out how to pull off getting the cage inside the house without anyone seeing us and more importantly, keeping my kids quiet. Poor girl. It was killing her! She wanted to tell so badly. The more we said "SHHH!", the more she wanted to tell.A week went by though, with no one noticing the many trips downstairs to get the frozen veggies, or the four of us locked in our room each night to play with the babies. We did good.

It must have been eating at my dad though, because he blabbed to my mom just a few nights ago. Although she didn't make us immediately take them out of her house, she did inform us to get them out ASAP. I figured once she saw one, she would change her mind since they are just so flippin' cute, but as I entered the kitchen (after carefully picking out the cutest one in the bunch) the squealy, squirmish dance began. I guess I can't blame her. After all, I'm still new at this rat thing too!