05/06/2026
Well wishes sent up would be greatly appreciated. Last week, the roof rat colony had to be split into sexes after reaching a population of 64 😵. During the individual trapping, sexing and sorting into two new setups which took 6 full days to accomplish, the first female caught escaped into the rat room.
I kept tabs on her via motion camera and named her ‘Rocket Rat’ since she was nesting in Hachi’s big cat tree, shaped like a rocket, until she moved on night 4.
When she was finally caught and added to the girl cage.. we discovered that she had stolen a bunch of plastics and made a big nest.
In this nest we found 3 kits 😭
I’m currently hand rearing until I can adopt the kits to another (undisturbed) nest.
Feeding hourly, the two males and a female are doing well but the little girl was a runt, couple grams smaller than her siblings.
Hoping they can all make it through to weaning after such hopeless timing of their birth 😔
Meet Rocket, before we knew what she had stashed in that nest.. and Teeter Tot, Booster & Norbert 💖🩵🩵 🤞
