I think perhaps the title says it all.
Almost two weeks ago, 13-days to be exact, on the day before Thanksgiving I found myself with the unlikeliest friends. I think that perhaps, I can also finally call myself the Mother of Nightmares seeing as I now have both pet snakes, and pet rats!
So, this is your trigger warning, if you don’t like rats or snakes, or don’t want to read about them, please click off of this post, and go check out one of my other posts. Like my post on The Write State of Mind or Self-Care is Not Selfish!
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So, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I’d like to introduce you to my little ritbeans! These two were originally destined to be feeders, which is a whole other topic in and of itself. For now, however, all I want to say about that is that, I do also have pet snakes. They are the scaley loves of my life, and they need to eat too but, I do not now, and will not ever support the practice of offering live prey to snakes or lizards as feeders.
(I’ve been keeping snakes for 10+ years now, and I, personally, think that feeding live prey is cruel. I’m not judging you if that’s a practice that you partake in, it’s just something that I will not personally do. It makes me uncomfortable and talking about it makes me uncomfortable. Okay? Okay.)
Now, onto the fun part, introductions. First up is Zero, my absolute shoulder baby. She doesn’t care who you are, if you pick her up, or she’s placed into your arms, her first destination is almost always going to be your shoulders and the back of your neck. In the past 13-days together, I’ve learned that some of her absolute favorite foods include green beans and blueberries. She adores pea and frozen veggie fishing, and she enjoys having little tastes of cheese.
Zero is all white aside from a silvery patch on her face, the tip of her left ear, and a cute pale pink tail. She’s the squeakiest of the two. When she’s on you, she is always squeaking. She will squeak in your hair, she will squeak in your arms, she will squeak as she runs around on my desktop. She’s just a very talkative bean.
Next up is my wonderful and chonky Boo Girl, who I’m told is a standard-eared Blaze. She’s almost the exact opposite of her sister, Zero. If she’s out of her cage, chances are, for the first couple of minutes she just wants to explore. She wants to sniff things, mouth the tips of your fingernails, and after she’s tired of that, she wither wants to tuck herself away in the pocket of your hoodie, or the crick of your elbow. That’s where she’s most happy napping while on her humans.
She loves the pocket bed that I’ve made for her and her sister on my desk, behind my felt letter board for when I’m letting them run around on my desk while I’m either writing, watching Netflix, or just doodling. She loves fishing for peas and frozen veggies, and her favorite foods are corn, blackberries, and little tastes of cheese here and there. She also loves running on her wheel, and while she doesn’t make as many squeaks as Zero you can definitely tell when she’s in a good mood!
Did I think that I would end up with one rat, let alone two? Hell no.
Rats were probably one of the absolute last creatures that I thought I would want to bring home and keep as pets, right there next to mice or fish. If I’m being honest with you, I thought that the next pet I was going to bring home would be a hedgehog like the one I’d had in the past named Pennywise.
I just wanted something sweet and small, something that would be content with sitting at my desk while I was working on my writing, or when watching something on Netflix. Especially now that Covid-19 has shut my job down for the second time this year, and I find myself more often than not sitting here alone, by myself in the darkness arguing with writer’s block and depression. Something fuzzy that will love me and need me because, snakes and sugar gliders only tolerate being out of their homes for so long before wanting to go back o their comfort zones, and a fat dog who snores loudly on my bed does not a desk baby make.
Ironically, in East Asian cultures, 2020 is the year of the rat.
The year of the rat only comes around once every 12-years. The rat is the first of all of the zodiac animals. According to one myth, the Jade Emperor said that the order would be decided by the order in which the animals arrived to his party. The Rat tricked the Ox into giving him a ride, Rat then jumped down from the Ox’s back, landing ahead of him and becoming first.
Associated with the Earthly Branch and the midnight hours. In terms of yin and yang, the Rat is considered o be yang, and represents the beginning of a new day. They also used to be seen as a sign of wealth and surplus in Chinese cultures due to their reproduction rate, they used to be prayed to for children. I also learned that 2020’s element is Metal, which hasn’t happened since 1960. Did you know any of that? I didn’t either until I started doing research on rats after I brought these two little beans home.
I love these two so very much already, and I absolutely cannot wait to write more about them, and to post more pictures of them. With trigger warnings attached of course, for the people afraid of rats.
Stay Wicked & Stay Safe.
-Sky
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