In Praise of Rats

This is Dragon, my son's pet rat.

When we first brought him home from the pet store, we put him in the basement with the hamster and had limited contact with him. I soon noticed that whenever we went downstairs, unlike the hamster, who ignored me and spun on his wheel, the rat would stand up on his hind legs, cock his head to one side, and try to make eye contact. Even my husband, who largely ignores the small animal population at our house, began talking to him. 

I decided that the rat seemed sad and discussed my concern with a rat-loving friend of mine. She told me that pet rats have been described as pocket dogs and need frequent attention to be happy. Social animals, they are often sold in pairs so that they don't get lonely. 

As a result of that discussion, we moved the rat into my boys' bedroom. He seems much happier upstairs. I talk to him daily. He is inquisitive about any activity that surrounds him, and with three kids in the house, there's quite a lot of activity. We started buying him dog toys, soft things that he can shred and tear and sleep on. 

Dragon is a good listener.

And that brings me to the point of this essay: Rats make nice pets. 

Frankly speaking, rats get a bad rap. A recent headline in The Independent screamed, "Bubonic plague-carrying fleas found on New York City rats." What a misleading headline! One would assume that we are headed straight for an epidemic of the plague. The actual article reveals that the rats were found to carry the type of fleas that transmit the disease, not the disease itself.

Another recent article - this one in The Guardian - suggests that giant gerbils, not rats, may have been the source of the Black Death. As reported by the BBC, a team of researchers from Norway "now plans to analyse plague bacteria DNA taken from ancient skeletons across Europe. If the genetic material shows a large amount of variation, it would suggest the team's theory is correct. Different waves of the plague coming from Asia would show more differences than a strain that emerged from a rat reservoir." 

So, the next time that someone tells you that they have a pet rat, try to keep an open mind. You might find that they aren't so bad after all.

The Death of a Pet

My son's hamster died today. Or, more accurately, I signed the paperwork to allow our vet to euthanize him. It is 2:11 in the morning and I am still too upset to go to bed, too upset to put a formal end to the day. I cleaned out Snowy's cage for the last time tonight. Little Brother was quite regular about cleaning out his pet's cage, but he wasn't up for it just yet. So, I wiped down the little yellow food bowl, the funky looking neon purple plastic sleeping hut, the green wheel that spun regularly in my basement. And I cried.

How do you explain death to a child? When our vet wanted to discuss options for our hamster - there weren't really any, but he wanted to make it look like there were, in case I wanted to spare my son the stark reality - I told the vet that my eight-year-old would take the news better than I would. I was right.

Little Brother calmly digested the fact that his hamster had an inoperable tumor. That the gigantic bald patch on his pet's hind end wasn't the result of anxious biting - it was a monster tumor, an aggressive tumor, a cancerous tumor. And he said to me, in such a very grown-up voice, that if his hamster was going to die, he didn't want him to die in pain.

We agreed that a lethal injection was the most humane thing to do, even though I am still up twelve hours later because I can't bear to think that I signed away the life of a living thing. In my 40+ years of life, I've never had to do that before. When I lost my first baby to miscarriage, it was one of the most horrible experiences of my life. But I didn't have to make a choice about it - it just happened. And when my sweet dachshund suffered a fatal seizure, I actually refused to put her down. I took her home, wrapped in a blanket, so she could die in my arms feeling safe and loved. She always hated the vet.

But this time, I had to sign a paper saying that it was okay to kill our pet. And even though I believe it was the right thing to do, it still hurts.

Snowy fought with the vet tech during the injection and actually managed to bite a finger. Immediately after, I snatched him up and held him on my chest and stroked him. A white dwarf hamster, he was so small that I could only use two fingers to stroke his back. He didn't try to bite me; he just settled into my touch. I knew he trusted me to do what was right by him. I sincerely hope that I did.

After the hamster died, the vet showed me the tumor's massive infrastructure. I actually found it somewhat comforting to look at Snowy's death from a clinical perspective. There was no doubt that our pet was terminal. An aggressive cancer, the tumor had large blood vessels feeding it. It was nearly one-quarter of the hamster's size and had already started to displace his bodily organs. Strange how he looked so fine from the top; if you didn't flip him over, you might not have realized - as we didn't - that he was sick. But he had chewed fur from one paw, so there were clear signs of distress.

Throughout the process, I tried to involve my son. I made sure that he spoke with the vet, but once I realized the severity of his pet's condition, I broke the news to him privately. I let him see me cry.  I asked him if he wanted to be there when Snowy died and he said no. I told him that was fine, but that it was important to me that I hold Snowy when it happened. Then I hugged my son and kissed the top of his head and told him how very sorry I was. We agreed to have the vet cremate the body. Neither of us wanted to carry a dead hamster home to bury. 

After we left the vet clinic, my son and I went for a long walk. I asked if he minded if we threw out the new portable pet carrier that we had just purchased for this trip. He said no, it just made him sad to look at it. I threw out the metal box with vehemence and felt vindicated when it made a resounding clank in the trash can. We talked about death and the unanswerable question of why pets and people have to die. We didn't come to any definite conclusions.

I don't have any answers to share or advice to give on how to teach children about death. Grief is a vulnerable, powerful, and intimately personal experience. For me, I touched back on old losses, as well as one I expect to experience soon. I'm not sure exactly how my son felt, but I knew that I was doing something important by walking alongside him, openly and honestly, and sharing the experience.

One Good Thing About Tent Worms

Photo credit: Eden, Janine and Jim,
via flickr // CC BY 2.0
Let's face it: Eastern tent caterpillars, commonly known as tent worms, are a nuisance. And that's putting it nicely. Tent worms can completely defoliate trees (eat all of the leaves), they put up ugly "tents" of webbing in tree branches, and have even been implicated in Mare Reproductive Loss Syndrome, a complication that occurs when horses inadvertently eat the caterpillars.

But, tent worms have one saving grace: they make nice pets. My boys like to collect tent worms and put them in their bug habitat, a small cylinder covered with netting.

Photo credit: Mama Joules
Tent worms are fun to watch, since they are active and like to crawl around. They are easy to feed. If Kerm and Little Brother forget to give them fresh offerings of leaves and grass daily, they don't seem to mind. Tent worms tend to get smaller if they aren't eating properly, so it's obvious when you should release them outside (away from your plants!). And, frankly, since they are an insect pest, you don't feel so bad if they die before becoming a moth. Most tent worms aren't as lucky as those in our bug habitat!

An interesting note: I read in several places that tent worms are social creatures. Some folks even described them coming out of their tent in succession, like cars on a train.

Photo credit: Tim and Selena Middleton, via flickr // CC BY 2.0
I wonder if tent worms get lonely and confused living in a bug habitat?

Kerm's Sea-Monkeys®

My older son received a Sea-Monkeys® kit for Christmas. Unbeknowst to me, he opened the package. After pouring in half of the recommended amount of water into the tank, he added the water purifier, eggs, and double the suggested amount of dried food. Nothing happened.

When I found the little tank, it was a murky green mess. I comforted Kerm and told him that we could contact the company and try again. I intended to dump out the water and clean out the tank. But, as it sometimes happens with busy moms, I promptly forgot all about it ... until a week later, when Kerm came running in to find me.

"Mommy! They hatched!"

Yes, we have a tank of Sea-Monkeys® living at our house. I think we might be on our second generation, since we have some large ones (and a couple that appear "stuck together"!) and some very teeny tiny dots that look like swimming periods.

What are they? Sea-Monkeys® are a modified species of brine shrimp designed to grow and thrive in the home. This species undergoes crytobiosis, which can be defined as a "reversibly suspended metabolic state." In short, their eggs are nearly indestructible. At this stage in their life cycle, they can survive for long periods of time without water or food.

I have mixed feelings about engineering animals for human use, particularly as novelty items. But I have to admit that, so far, I like the Sea-Monkeys®. These little guys are easy to "grow" and appear to be robust. After all, ours easily tolerated the odd conditions that Kerm threw at them.

I hope that our tank thrives for a long time. In fact, the Sea-Monkeys® website claims that a colony like ours might live for up to two years!

Photo credit: Mama Joules (Note how small they are -- that's my thumb in the bottom of the picture. The critter that you can see looks bigger than it really is because it was swimming very quickly when I took the photo.)