OER 5.01.05 - 11.21.06
So the week before Thanksgiving my boss finally put my one-eyed rat down.
She was born completely missing one eye and with the other eye somewhat deformed. She couldn't really be used for any experiments, so she should have been put down, but I got attached to her and my boss didn't have the heart to take her away from me.
We're not really supposed to keep any rats past 6 or 7 months of age, and we're certainly not supposed to keep "pets", but my boss humored me by keeping her around. I got to breed her and she had four litters of healthy, fully-formed babies. After her litters, she gained an incredible amount of weight. She eventually got to be about 700 grams, while most of our other girls were around 250-300 grams.
And she actually made it past a year old, which was a monumental occasion for me because she was probably the oldest rat that we've ever had in the lab. Around her birthday, she got these sores on the bottoms of her back feet because she was so overweight that her feet couldn't lay flat on the ground, so she sort of swam around her cage on the sides of her feet. And she was still the cutest thing to me, even though I suspect she was pretty hideous to everyone else. It's just like all mothers think their babies are cute even when that's not necessarily the case.
I couldn't really tell if the sores were hurting her. And I knew that the vet wouldn't treat her because she's wasn't an experimental animal or even supposed to be around at all. I just couldn't justify putting a perfectly healthy animal down just because it had foot sores. But the sores opened and began to bleed out and I finally broke down and told my boss that it was probably time to let her go. My boss asked me if I wanted to be there, but I didn't want to make a scene at work, so I said goodbye and ran into the bathroom and cried my eyes out.
OER, I never named you because I didn't want to get too attached to you, but I couldn't help it. I'm just a sucker for rats and you were no exception. I wish I could have done more for you. I wish you could have seen grass and sunlight and food other than industrial lab blocks. I wish I could have given you a better life with little rat friends and a soft bed and lots of kisses instead of watching you live out your days alone in a tiny cage. But I'm always going to feel good that in a place where I see so many rats come and go every day, at least I saved you. And now it's sad to walk in everyday and not see you, but I'm glad I had you at all. I miss you, sweetie.
She was born completely missing one eye and with the other eye somewhat deformed. She couldn't really be used for any experiments, so she should have been put down, but I got attached to her and my boss didn't have the heart to take her away from me.
We're not really supposed to keep any rats past 6 or 7 months of age, and we're certainly not supposed to keep "pets", but my boss humored me by keeping her around. I got to breed her and she had four litters of healthy, fully-formed babies. After her litters, she gained an incredible amount of weight. She eventually got to be about 700 grams, while most of our other girls were around 250-300 grams.
And she actually made it past a year old, which was a monumental occasion for me because she was probably the oldest rat that we've ever had in the lab. Around her birthday, she got these sores on the bottoms of her back feet because she was so overweight that her feet couldn't lay flat on the ground, so she sort of swam around her cage on the sides of her feet. And she was still the cutest thing to me, even though I suspect she was pretty hideous to everyone else. It's just like all mothers think their babies are cute even when that's not necessarily the case.
I couldn't really tell if the sores were hurting her. And I knew that the vet wouldn't treat her because she's wasn't an experimental animal or even supposed to be around at all. I just couldn't justify putting a perfectly healthy animal down just because it had foot sores. But the sores opened and began to bleed out and I finally broke down and told my boss that it was probably time to let her go. My boss asked me if I wanted to be there, but I didn't want to make a scene at work, so I said goodbye and ran into the bathroom and cried my eyes out.
OER, I never named you because I didn't want to get too attached to you, but I couldn't help it. I'm just a sucker for rats and you were no exception. I wish I could have done more for you. I wish you could have seen grass and sunlight and food other than industrial lab blocks. I wish I could have given you a better life with little rat friends and a soft bed and lots of kisses instead of watching you live out your days alone in a tiny cage. But I'm always going to feel good that in a place where I see so many rats come and go every day, at least I saved you. And now it's sad to walk in everyday and not see you, but I'm glad I had you at all. I miss you, sweetie.