and this ended up taking me an hour anyway
so i've been neglecting lj in favor of tumblr lately, which is just an excellent, excellent service that i highly recommend to you all. i have two weeks worth of thoughts to sift through and actually decide what is worth telling anyone, but i'm not about to write a long update at 3 in the morning-- just wanted to make a note for those who've been following the little rat saga, and actually care, that the little twerps are starting to "get along." which means there's about two or three scuffles a day as opposed to constant animosity. it's funny, in a way, because i'd been trying to get this worked out for at least a week, and it wasn't until i'd literally given up on it ever happening that they all surprised me. so i'll tell you this little story while i sit here and watch a disney channel movie i'm pretty sure is secretly about ken's life:
we'd been doing introductions and gradually wilson (aka King Rat) had been attacking the newbies less and less. so we decided maybe it was time to put them in the same cage together. it had multiple levels so if the newbs needed a place to run i had been keeping them separated in the multilevel cage with this piece of coroplast between the levels when we weren't there, just as a safety measure. well, the newbs were not integrating well. basically wilson was being a huge bully and chasing them whenever he encountered them, nipping at their tails and backs. he was also spending all of his time in the top level, which they were used to occupying, and no matter how many times we tried to show them that, yes, there is a bottom level with a food dish and water bottle and hideyhole that they can occupy, they'd just huddle pitifully on the "mezzanine" levels of the cage, which had none of these things.
i'd been so desperate i actually gave them all a bath together in the kitchen sink, hearing THAT could work. yeah right. no matter what i tried, in fact, they looked like they were going to be miserable with the arrangement, so i gave up after a couple of days of this and separated them (newbs on top, wilson on bottom). i put the coroplast in, stated my intentions to ken that i would not remove it anymore, and ken and i went out for a couple of hours. now keep in mind that coroplast had been in all night before, with no problems (except we'd found out bruce had figured out how to slip past it somehow recently, but we couldn't really figure out why he'd WANT to).
so imagine my surprise when we came back to find the newbies on the mezzanine once again, AND a huge hole chewed into the coroplast. judging by the debris it hadn't been wilson who'd chewed the hole-- it was the newbs. after freaking out that they'd chewed a hole in coroplast (they're fine by the way, no ill effects yet so i guess they managed not to swallow much), ken and i kinda looked at each other and he said something akin to "well there's a clear signal." so we left the coroplast out.
and after that, things calmed down significantly. the other day i finally saw wilson and bruce sharing the mezzanine together. i don't know if they'll ever progress to snuggling together but i'm just glad i don't have to worry about one being half-eaten in the morning. so that's good enough for me.
oh god, this disney channel movie is totally ripping off the sandman and in turn seems to have been totally ripped off by up. a dog named barnabas with a voice translator around its neck? come on disney, you're supposed to be the trendsetters here.
ah, it just got even better: they just introduced a clone of rygel from farscape.
ok. goodnight, from the zoo.
we'd been doing introductions and gradually wilson (aka King Rat) had been attacking the newbies less and less. so we decided maybe it was time to put them in the same cage together. it had multiple levels so if the newbs needed a place to run i had been keeping them separated in the multilevel cage with this piece of coroplast between the levels when we weren't there, just as a safety measure. well, the newbs were not integrating well. basically wilson was being a huge bully and chasing them whenever he encountered them, nipping at their tails and backs. he was also spending all of his time in the top level, which they were used to occupying, and no matter how many times we tried to show them that, yes, there is a bottom level with a food dish and water bottle and hideyhole that they can occupy, they'd just huddle pitifully on the "mezzanine" levels of the cage, which had none of these things.
i'd been so desperate i actually gave them all a bath together in the kitchen sink, hearing THAT could work. yeah right. no matter what i tried, in fact, they looked like they were going to be miserable with the arrangement, so i gave up after a couple of days of this and separated them (newbs on top, wilson on bottom). i put the coroplast in, stated my intentions to ken that i would not remove it anymore, and ken and i went out for a couple of hours. now keep in mind that coroplast had been in all night before, with no problems (except we'd found out bruce had figured out how to slip past it somehow recently, but we couldn't really figure out why he'd WANT to).
so imagine my surprise when we came back to find the newbies on the mezzanine once again, AND a huge hole chewed into the coroplast. judging by the debris it hadn't been wilson who'd chewed the hole-- it was the newbs. after freaking out that they'd chewed a hole in coroplast (they're fine by the way, no ill effects yet so i guess they managed not to swallow much), ken and i kinda looked at each other and he said something akin to "well there's a clear signal." so we left the coroplast out.
and after that, things calmed down significantly. the other day i finally saw wilson and bruce sharing the mezzanine together. i don't know if they'll ever progress to snuggling together but i'm just glad i don't have to worry about one being half-eaten in the morning. so that's good enough for me.
oh god, this disney channel movie is totally ripping off the sandman and in turn seems to have been totally ripped off by up. a dog named barnabas with a voice translator around its neck? come on disney, you're supposed to be the trendsetters here.
ah, it just got even better: they just introduced a clone of rygel from farscape.
ok. goodnight, from the zoo.