OPERATION I SMELL A RAT!

I've been considering getting myself a really big treat for my birthday, a daschund. Whilst scouring the internet looking for breeders, I came across an ad that JUST FELT WRONG. It said "Hi, if you need to re-home your pet rats, please email me. You can drop them off at my house. I have room for 7 rats all up, and offer the best care possible whilst I re-home your loved one" or words to that effect. It also described the rat this mystery person already owns, and gave some details about the happy existence it has. Soooo, feeling a little bit suspicious about this, I checked the contact email address and to my non-surprise I discovered that IT WAS STYLISH'S!

As tempted as I was to charge down the hallway, guns blazing, calling for blood, I decided that that particular method would not involve any lessons learnt, and may in fact just cause further tensions. So I thought carefully about what to do, and then contacted a few friends and asked for their assistance with this matter. One friend volunteered to email her and OPERATION I SMELL A RAT began!

My friends sent her some emails offering her rats! One had a litter of 12 that were of an undisclosed sex, and were only 2 weeks old. One had three male rats. One of the emails said ...

I have 6 rats, one has a resected bowel and needs regular care because it basically leaks diarrhoea constantly, but she's a real sweetie, very cute and cuddly. One of the other ones was born a siamese twin, it's twin was removed by the vet, but it still has one extra leg that couldn't be removed, and the scar is prone to infection so you need to be on to that - I'll bring you the rest of the antibiotic cream to put on it as well.

Thanks so much, I think it's great what you're doing.

and another said ...

Hello,

I saw your ad on xxxxxxxx and would like to offer you 3 pedigree Poodle Woollen Rats (One is fluoro pink, accident with highlighter I'm afraid), 1 Blueberry Rainforest rat, 1 White tailed Chocolate Rat and 1 Skipping Tree Rat. When could you take them off our hands? We are moving out of Cairns to Kuranda and need to get rid of them ASAP. I can throw in the cage and the dry food too.

L.

P.s The Skipping Tree rat bites. Suspect its not pedigree but a mutt given how close to the common garden rat it looks like. And it doesn't skip anymore.

She sent responses like

Hi

Oh I am so sorry but someone just abandoned two rats with litters and now I have 22 rats! I am having a hard time hand rearing 6 that the mother won't feed so I can give you a contact number for someone who can help as I can't?

and

Hello, OMG I would be so happy to help! but they would need their mother at that stage up until 6weeks so can can you deal with giving her up to? I am quite capable of helping I just raised a litter of rats with my mum that were found abandoned at my door step they were rehomed to a lovely woman

Then she sheepishly came into our bedroom (where A and I were muffling our laughter because we knew she'd just checked her email) and told me about a terribly sick rat that needed to come and be cared for by us. And then added something vague about how she'd put an ad on a website and then "forgotten about it" - not before we got two revolting, stinking male rats the size of your average Great Dane! And it was at this point that I said to her "You should be careful what you advertise on the internet, because YOUR MOTHER MIGHT FIND THE AD". She didn't cotton on, and repeated the case for the poor sick rat with 5 legs and a seeping wound ... so I repeated my sage advice, and suddenly she froze. She'd worked it out! She wanted to get angry at me, but she was laughing too hard, thank heavens!

Soooo, I think that a valuable lesson was learnt here tonight! There are lots of freaks on the internet, be glad it was your mother (and some freak with a pink rat!) who discovered this ad and not a real, dangerous, predator.

She has removed the ad now I'm pleased to say.