It happened on the weekend. I think it was Sunday that I opened her cage to let her crawl out onto my hand, and as I reached behind her to assist her, she turned on my finger. She didn't bite, but I could feel it was teeth, not her little pink nose, which touched me. Then she didn't want to stay in my hands, so I let her out in the empty livingroom, and placed lots of boxes and crumpled papers and balls and such around for her to explore. I touched her every so often, just so she wouldn't forget me, and think she was running completely free. But when I went to catch her to return her to her cage, she turned on my hand again. Again no biting, but she was not going willingly.
When I brought her to her cage, she jumped in, and then promptly jumped back out again. I placed her back in, but she was climbing all over the walls, so I tied a string with ends which hung down almost to the floor of the cage. She attacked it with enthusiasm, pulling and climbing it.
Yesterday, she was again restless, despite a number of excursions out of the cage, and her usual toilet rolls and other objects in her cage to play with. (Her favourite object is a little dome-shaped sleeping box which I created from an old file folder, which she has plugged up with paper towelling. When she's not running about, she disappears into it, and probably sleeps there.) So I threaded a number of Cheerios onto a string, and hung it hammock-like from the top of the cage, so that it is reachable from the ground. I see today that she has been chewing off the Cheerios, only 1/3 of them remain.
Today she did some more exploring and running in the living room, and I made sure I caught her several times to let her know I was still there. Finally, I gave her my pullover sweater, which she crawled in for probably an hour, next to me while I worked / surfed on the computer. When she came near the opening of a sleeve or neck, I pulled back the sweater and said "Hi Sam", to which she would dart back inside. When it came time to pull her out, it was a small challenge to find her in there, and catch her again.
5 comments:
It is an interesting stage to me too. I have only ever seen a few pet rats and they seemed tame to me. I hope you are right it is just a stage and he'll be more compliant with you as he gets older. I would think so. He is cute and I can imagine his antics most fun to watch. Have a great day and I hope the weather is beautiful in your neck of the woods.
so cute..... I share bunnies on my site sometimes. Animals do love the garden as much as we do!
Well... this is a pet that doesn't seem to interest me... at all. That's saying something, because I've had MANY different animals over the years in my classroom (usually 6 or so at a time!)
Sorry... ;-)
Hey, Lily, Maybe it's time to change the "he" to "she" on your blog posts about Sam... since we now know Sam is really Samantha! lol
Andrea - You're right. I've updated it, and it reads much better now that we know she's a girl.
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