The Ballad of Fuzzy Lumpkins

Some of you are aware, but for those of you who aren’t, I keep rats as pets. The short explanation is that I’m not home a ton and I’m allergic to dander, so they provide a low-maintenance, low-allergen option for all of my snuggling needs.

After losing my male rat, Big Dutch, in July, I wasn’t immediately ready to adopt again so I waited until sometime in October, at which point I got myself three of the sweetest little girls I’ve ever met. They are curious and joyful and I love them to pieces! They started exhibiting the symptoms of exacerbated mycoplasma a few weeks ago, though, so for about a month I’ve been making regular trips to the rescue headquarters to get medicine for them. On one of these trips I made friends with a complete chunk of a male in a group of brothers who have been at the rescue for most of their lives--they’re seven or eight months old. Jenn the Rescue Lady pulled him out for me, and he was perfectly content to ride around on my shoulder and sit in my hood and let me give him whisker loves while I hung out with Jenn and bought yet another hammock for the girls. (They shred them like it’s going out of style. “Kids, it’s called a ‘pocket hammock’ for a reason--it already has a pocket!” “Nah, we need to make another pocket, kthx.”)

So, naturally, he came home with me, and to keep with my theme of names from the Powerpuff Girls cartoon, was dubbed Fuzzy Lumpkins. Since I hadn’t intended to add to my colony I didn’t have anything to get him home in, so I tucked him in the hammock and hoped for the best. He sat quite happily in my lap the whole way home--he even helped me drive (his little paws and chin resting on the bottom of the steering wheel). Now, he still had his ‘boys’, so he couldn’t go in with the girls until those were removed, so he was in a cage by himself next to the girls but not so close that we could have any little ‘accidents’. I got him set up, and a few hours later I reached into the cage to add something--and he chomped me.

Now, I’ve been bitten by my rats before. Most often it’s really just a ‘touch with teeth’ or a little nibble because there’s food flavor on my hands, and that’s perfectly natural and acceptable. Sometimes it’s a nip, which means “Hey, you startled me!” or “Exsqueak me, I don’t like that, please don’t do it again,” and that’s also okay. Rats don’t speak English, so they communicate with what nature gave them. Other times, when a bite has broken the skin, it’s either because the rat went to take a treat and missed and got a finger instead, and once or twice it was a ‘level two warning bite’ because the rat was pissed off. This bite, though? This one was different. It was deep, and it was hard, he didn’t immediately let go like they usually do.

“Okay,” I thought to myself. “He’s had a stressful day, he’s in a new place, I’ll give him this one.”

Fast-forward a couple of days. I’m cleaning the bottom of his cage and he is taking a walk around the living room. When I finished he was to my left, so I reached across to let him sniff my hand before I picked him up to put him back in his house. He took one sniff, and then,

::CHOMP::

At that point I was understandably confused and didn’t know what to do, so I called Jenn who gave me a pep talk and some very good instructions on how to get the little booger to knock it the fuck off.

“Okay, I can do this! I can, I can, I can!”

That night (when he bit me again) I followed Jenn’s instructions to the letter. Rats are very, very smart, and they push boundaries like toddlers--or in Fuzzy Lumpkins’ case, a hormonal teenager, which he pretty much was--and, like dogs, they pick up on your vocal cues.

So there I was, sitting on my living room floor, bleeding profusely from one hand and holding the offending muncher in the other so that he was facing me, and lecturing him. He was taken aback, which was the point, so I popped him back into the cage and went on about my evening. In spite of the new war wound I was cautiously optimistic, so the next evening when the little booger started to bite at my pants for no apparent reason, I attempted a repeat performance--but he got hold of my thumb.

And he bit.

And he bit.

And he bit some more.

He went back to the rescue the next day.

The whole thing is a big bummer because I really wanted him to adjust and join my little rat colony (once he was fixed). Males are generally much more relaxed than females and can mellow out the energy of the group somewhat, and they’re more likely to snuggle properly rather than snuggle-explore-snuggle-explore-walk on your face-explore-snuggle. When he was out of the cage and not busy chomping me, he would follow me around like a dog. I think he would have been a prime candidate for the guinea pig harness and leash that yes I totally do own shut up. Sadly, he wouldn’t stop biting, I opted to keep the use of my hands, and we were forced to go our separate ways. I feel like a failure, honestly, but at least I wasn’t one of those jerkoffs who returns an animal for a truly stupid reason like “Oh, it just doesn’t fit with our lifestyle” or “The kids got bored with it”...right?


UPDATE: My thumb is slowly recovering. It’s still bruised and slightly swollen and numb up the inside, but that’s easing off gradually.