Crappy Cell Phone Pics
They seem to be enjoying their cage expansion I made last night. I made a vertical tunnel out of wire mesh and made a little room at the top. I was going to call it the space needle but it's more of a can shape instead of a saucer shape so I guess I'll just call it the crows nest.
The tunnel starts about 3 inches from the floor of the cage, in the corner where it can be braced in all directions so it doesn't wiggle much at the top. The wiggling comes only from the flexing of the cage. The tunnel is stiff and I was holding it like a baseball bat before I put it in the cage. The top and bottom of the crows nest thingy at the top of the observation tower are some parts I found at Menards yesterday in the HVAC ducting section. They're end caps for 8" furnace ducts. Mrs. Duck wanted me to remove her from the pictures but it was easier just to make her face blank like in the Pink Floyd "Another Brick In The Wall Part II" video.
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In the third picture, .. yes, that's the rat's little weiner. Their nuts are about the size of a pistachio, each one, ... but they retract them into their bodies when they're cold.
The smaller rat, whom she named "Striper" because of the black streak down his spine, is starting to warm up to the humans. Neither of them will come out of their little house when I open the cage, but if I remove the lid from their little house, they'll both run around the cage exploring. It's how I was able to get "Squeaker" to discover the crows nest thing. (They were both in their little travel cage while I was working on that thing last night).
Neither rat will come onto my hand, but both will come up and sniff my hands. Striper will let me pick him up if I do it slowly and gently. He gets a little wiggly until I feel the cold paws on my hand. Then all of a sudden he calms down, so I'm guessing it's the warmth of my hand that makes him calm down. Usually I have my right hand cupped around him to keep him warm but I couldn't operate the phone cam that way. In these pics below, he was eating a pistachio.
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