The bruxing and boggling badger
Don't let the title fool you - Badger is the name of one of the 'boys' that the li'l Deviant has. Badger and Wombat (porko and Wombi for short).
What I have here is proof that zen is contagious. Let me explain first - Badger and Wombat (almost having his name being 'Mushroom', but was decided against) are brothers. Badger is a little bigger, and Wombat, we figured is Metrosexual (slightly smaller, and although a male, has clear female tendencies - like grooming himself and keeping himself clean). As well, Wombat has impeccably white teeth for a rat. He and his brother fight, as most siblings do, and it was cute to see them vie for domination.
Wombat is also known as the 'Zen Rat' - Whenever you hear the chittering of rats, that's them 'bruxing' (my Rat Lore has increased dramatically since being with the li'l Deviant!), and it means that they are happy with ... whatever. Now, Wombat bruxes all the time. He has food, he bruxes. He gets washed, sure he whines, but he'll brux shortly after. Brux brux brux. He's known as the 'Zen Rat' for this reason, as nothing seems to worry him.
Badger, on the other hand, barely, if ever bruxes. He's content, sure, when he's eating or terrorizing his brother, but I can count a small number of times when he's actually bruxed, which is not that often.
Now, on top of all this 'bruxing' and what have you, there's something called 'boggling'. It's when a rat bruxes so hard (a situation where they grind their teeth in excitement) that their eyes pulsate. Yes. They throb. New rat owners who witness this are a tad freaked out, thinking that there is something wrong.
No, there's nothing wrong - they are just REALLY friggin' happy.
This clip is the li'l Deviant holding Badger - the rat who barely, if ever bruxes, let alone boggles!!
I apologize if the quality of this doesn't turn out. But dammit, it's adorable and I love it.
Now, saddly, it seems that the little bugger is on his last legs. Like his brother, both of them have lived a long and glorious life. Rats don't usually live all that long, or so I'm told, and these two buggers have been around for a better part of 3 years.
I'm not going to go into that right now, if at all. Suffice it to say that, well... yeah.
I'm done for now.