A little gross

If you're a pet person, specifically a rat person, then this will be slightly entertaining to you. Gross and entertaining. And, surprisingly, I've heard a similar story recently involving two dachshunds.

Bringing my babies some food this morning, I saw Annabel coming up to the cage in anticipation. She knows that when a human comes to the cage two things happen: she is either released from her metal prison and gets to roam around, or the miracle that is a full food dish comes into being. So, I looked down on and saw something at the bottom of her neck. Why, it was a poop, one that looked like someone consumed too much dairy. I flicked the piece off of Annabel using a tissue, which she thought was a game and tried to take the tissue from me. I thought about taking her out to give her a mini-bath, but thought that making her do something else against her will might make her angry with me. I had already force-fed her the antibiotics for her respiratory infection.

I got a little concerned. Buffy was already running around the room, getting in her morning exercise. I decided to lift up their wooden house, since there is only one way to get poop to land on a rat without sitting on her directly, and thought that a second-story attack was probably what happened. Well, I was correct in my assumption, but I had no idea to what degree. It was like a rat had exploded. I have never seen so much crap. It didn't help that they probably spread it around with their feet and investigated it with their snouts. Thinking about that latter makes me nervous. So I removed the poop bombed bedding with a glove - there was no way I'd have removed that without some sort of protection - and replaced it.

I decided the possible reason for the explosion was a food source. One of two items will be temporarily removed from their diet: cilantro and milk. The cilantro is an herb they love. They eat it up as though they were slurping up spaghetti. The milk is a little treat they discovered on their own. I had left my bowl of milk on the floor and they found a delicious white liquid was located in the bottom of the bowl. I'm not sure which of these could be the culprit, but I'm concerned that spoiling the rat babies with these treats might not be the best decision. Exploding rats is not something I'm fond of, especially given the amount of poo I found on their bedding. It took up probably 1/6 of the 3" by 4" piece of towel they sleep on. Impressive that that much came out of something so small. Not so fun to clean up or find on the back of one of the rats.

I'm still not sure whether Buffy intentionally launched her poop bomb onto Annabel or if Annabel was an innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time. We'll see what surprises they have for me when I get home today. And I just cleaned their cage!