CHAPTER VIIIMY PET RATS
I was very much interested in these baby guineapigs, and was very much surprised to find them so fully developed at birth. Tiny and Guinea had families about the same time, and I found all the little pigs with pretty, soft-haired bodies, open eyes, and their teeth through, the milk teeth being already shed. In a few hours they could run by the side of their mothers, and in two days they could nibble vegetables.
Unfortunately, Guinea became ill, also her brown baby. I gave her white baby to Tiny, who was an excellent foster-mother to it, and taking Guinea and Brownie upstairs, I put them on a hot-water bag.
In watching Guinea I shuddered, thinking of the grief of the little girls, should she die. She breathed rapidly all the afternoon and evening. If I had dosed her with castor or sweet oil, it might have done good, but I did not think of it. At midnight she jumped up, ran around the room, gasped for breath, and died. I put her in a white box and sent for her little owners, who came sadly to see her. Never would I have believed it possible that one could become so much attached to a guineapig.
Guinea’s young one did well in the basement; the brown one died after I had fussed over it for a week, getting up two or three times at night, and stretching out my hand to poor Brownie, who would crawl on it to be fed.
I had the over-zeal of ignorance, and gave poor Piggy undiluted cow’s milk. Common sense might have taught me that a little water and a little sugar should be added to the milk of a great strong creature like a cow, when fed to any small animal. Afterward, I brought up several young guineapigs whose parents had died. Just at first one has to use a medicine-dropper or teaspoon to feed them, but in a marvelously short time they will stick their own little noses in their bread and milk.
One of my favorite pigs was a dark-colored, long-haired Peruvian, that looked like a weeping willow, minus its trunk.
When I first got him his funereal appearance seriously affected some of my birds. He lived, andwas happy with me, and when I moved my pets to my farm I took him and the other pigs with me. They so much enjoyed the delicious red and white clover, and the kind attention of a relative to whom I gave them, that when I sold my farm, I left my pigs behind me. However, I have quite missed them, and often think that some day I must again start a nursery of guineapigs.
I became very much fonder of them than of my rabbits. They were very much better behaved, though I must acknowledge, that as far as my experience with children goes, rabbits seem to have more power than the gentle pigs of inspiring a warm affection.
The most enthusiastic rabbit-lovers I have ever known were two little girls, who came to me one day with a pair of tiny white rabbits. Would I give these little creatures a home? I was very glad to do so, for I thought that my gray Rab, who was now a big handsome rabbit, would not despise these creatures of her own kind, as she had despised the guineapig. I put the little white fellows in with her, and to my surprise she darted at them, and tried to injure them in such an unmistakable way that I promptly pounced on her and took her out in the furnace-room. She did not like this, and gazed angrily through the wire door at the white rabbits that were careering around with the guineapigs. She had been naughty, but still I was sorry for her. On remembering her first friend, the spotted rabbit,I bought another to play with her. She got on very well with this new friend, but the little white rabbits fell into misfortune.
On going into the aviary one morning, I found one of them cold in death. What had happened to him? There was nothing there that could injure him. After some hard thinking and Sherlock Holmes examination of tracks and signs, I discovered that during the night the poor little rabbit had started to eat hay on the edge of the long, steep bank of earth, had fallen down, and could not find the path leading to his little brother above. He had died of fright, and I soon had the bank low enough for guineapigs and rabbits to run up and down. The surviving rabbit became ill, so I put him out in the warmer furnace-room, and drove Rab and Spotty to the aviary.
This made fresh trouble. Rab had been quite upset when I took her from the aviary, and now she was more upset because I had put her back. She had become accustomed to the furnace-room, and she shook the wire door, and gnawed the woodwork, and at last, seeing the rage she was in, I allowed her to return to the furnace-room. She was so ill that she lay down as if she were going to die. I slipped a hot-water bag under her, and advised her to keep on it. She gazed about her in a peculiar way with laid-back ears, looking as if she did not think much of my opinion. However, she kept on the bag, only occasionally getting up to take along drink of cold water, and in a day or two was quite well.
While she was ill she did not molest the rabbit, nor did her companion, Spotty, interfere with him. He was a pretty good rabbit, and not bad-tempered, as Rab was. As soon as she recovered she sought the young rabbit’s life, and I was obliged to have a stout enclosure made for him, as I still wished to keep him in the warm furnace-room. I knew there were rats in this room. We saw them running about with Rab and Spotty, eating their grain with them, drinking from their water dishes, nestling in their bundle of hay, and sitting by the furnace to keep warm. I have always had a liking for rats, and it did not occur to me that these well-fed creatures, with the peculiarly bright, intelligent eyes, could or would kill my baby rabbit.
However, they did do so; and one January afternoon when I went to the basement to feed my downstairs family, I was shocked to discover his little blood-stained body in my path. The cruel rats had entered the wire pen of the little fellow, had dragged out his body, and had eaten his brains.
I ran for my father, who was always most sympathetic. He said he did not see how the rats had pried up the heavy supports of the rabbit’s cage. However, they had done it; and I wrapped poor Bunny up and put him in the furnace—cremation being my preferred mode of disposing of my pets’ bodies.
Then we spent the evening in making a trap for the rats, but I fancy they watched us while we were doing it, and we, of course, caught none of them. We did catch some young ones, however, and the five tiny things looked so innocent as they sat in their trap that I could not make up my mind to have them killed, and took the cage up to my father’s study.
“Suppose we keep them,” I suggested, “and train them—make them friendly with the young rabbits and pigs and birds.”
“Suppose we do,” he said; and leaving his books, he descended to the aviary with me, and together we rigged a big cage against one of the brick walls. There the rat babies could look at my pets, and get acquainted with them.
Young rats are really pretty creatures. These little ones had white breasts, pink paws, shell-like, whitish ears, black whiskers, and bright, black eyes. They slept all day in a brown box at the top of their big cage. This box looked something like a pulpit, and, if roused, they would lean over their pulpit, holding on by their pink paws, their beady eyes seeming to say, “What do you want? We don’t like to play till night comes.”
One day one of them became ill, and lay under the straw at the bottom of the cage for some time. It was almost human to see the way in which he would stretch one little pink paw from under the straw, and feebly move it to and fro.
When these young rats were partly grown, we caught two tiny ones and put in with them. The new-comers were very anxious to get up in the brown box, and tried climbing up hand over hand, or rather paw over paw toward it. The big ones amused themselves by leaning out of the box and pushing them down. I gave the little ones a tangle of wool to sleep in on the bottom of the cage, and two or three days later the older ones relented, and allowed them to climb up to sleep in the box.
It seemed to me particularly appropriate that my father, who is a doctor of divinity, should take an interest in the training of these young rats. So I was amused when he proposed to give them a whirligig. This wheel was put in the cage, and soon my father had his rat students so trained that when he struck the cage sharply, and said, “Come, boys!” one of them would spring from the pulpit, his little feet flying, his black eyes excited, and his whole appearance apparently denoting his appreciation of the amusement of his spectators in his mechanical performance, though I finally concluded that the intelligent creature was supremely bored by it.
After a time one of these young rats managed in some way or other to squeeze himself out of the cage. I did not concern myself greatly about it. I intended to give every one of them their freedom some day, but I was sorry for his evident loneliness, and amused beyond description to see him one day trying to insinuate himself back into the cage.
He spent the most of the time on the top of the cage, but sometimes ran about the aviary with the guineapigs and birds, and always squealed loudly with delight when I entered with fresh food.
Whether he incited the others to escape from their cage or not, I did not know; but one day I said to my father that his rats were very quiet, and had not been eating much, also that only one performer came out, and went round and round on his wheel, stopping occasionally and holding on to the bars with his pink feet as if to say, “Where are my brothers?”
I examined his cage, and found only three young ones in it; the other four were running loose in the aviary, probably to the great delight of the former solitary young one.
The other three soon got out, and now I had seven rats frisking to and fro over the earth floor of the aviary. They had a delightful time, stealing newspapers and straw from the guineapigs’ barrels. They made a nice large nest in a hole in the earth, and for a time were model rats.