A Rat Tail Tale

Today at work I assigned myself the job of cleaning out the feeder tanks in the stock room. The feeder tanks are nine aquarium tanks [7 ten-gallon tanks and 2 forty-gallon tanks] full of either mice, pinkie mice [baby mice], Siberian dwarf hamsters [because they multiply faster than mice], and rats [of various sizes]. Now, usually it's my job to clean out these smelly prison chambers on Fridays, but being as how I was sick last Friday and apparently no one else in my work works, I found myself cleaning out these tanks to avoid having to do the Tuesday/Thursday animal department person's jobs all day. [Can you gather a slight sense of disapproval of my work environment? Ok. I'll stop with my frustrating complaining now. Breathe through it.. breathe through it... Ok, I have managed to shake the days stresses from my mind. Now, I can just tell you the story for the story's sake. See... I can already tell that you are much more comfortable sitting there in your stiff computer chair. Ahhhh, yes... so relaxed you are.]

So, back to the story... I was cleaning out feeder tanks and was nearing the end of the row. Now, the stock room where these feeders are housed is not necessarily the warmest of places. In fact, there is no heat in the stock room at all, so when the huge truck delivery door at the end of the long, skinny stock room opens to receive stock, the frigid winter air is vacuumed in; it creates a wind tunnel type experience. So, these poor little feeders are freezing and often pass their days huddled together for warmth. [Don't I paint such a pathetic picture of these little feeders? And yet I hypocritically am the one who feeds them to our snakes and our lizards. What can I say? That's my job.] So, since these little critters are freezing, I tried my best to find little animal shelters (wood boxes) and extra warm bedding for their tanks. Alas, after six hours of spray washing, water filling and bedding fluffing, I found myself at the last tank. And that tank was none other than [cue the scary music] the rat tank. Now, normally our rats are not so psychotic as they are on this beautiful winter morning. See, our rats have recently just popped out babies since the super annoying male rat in there finds it his personal life goal to repopulate the world one rat mom at a time [or some twice]. So these moms that would otherwise be kind, playful, sweet rats [well... sorta] are turned into mean ferocious people killers. [Well, maybe "people killers" is taking it a bit too far, but I have been bit before for simply changing the food in the tank.] So as you can probably imagine, I was REALLY looking forward to changing the rat bedding this afternoon [heavy on the sarcasm here].

I grabbed a big shovel [no, I wasn't going to bash them over the heads] to distract them while I grabbed their tails [the best way to pick up unfamiliar rats] to transport them into a box while I cleaned their tanks. It worked quite well for all but one rat. See, this jumbo rat was the most recent rat mom of nine baby rats and I had taken two of them this morning for another lizard's breakfast. AKA... she was not a very big fan of me.

I tried my little shovel technique on her and nearly got bit twice. [Yay fun!] Then the third time was a charm and voila! I got the rat mom out of the tank. I was congratulating myself in my head when the mom began swinging. Now, let me explain something about swinging. Rat swinging has nothing to do with a back and forth motion of an ordinary park swing. Rat swinging begins much like a two year old's tantrum with the body flailing, but then turns into a psychotic tire swing-like motion of spinning. I moved a bit quicker toward the box and in what felt like hours I looked down to see the rat's lower third of her tail rip completely off and the mom fell into the box. I held the third of the tail for a brief second before dropping it and nearly throwing up. See, here's the bad part. I had the outer section of the tail, but the inner section of the tail? Guess who still had that? You got it! The Mom!

VOMIT!!!!!!

So, I had another girl come get on a glove and pick up the rat mom so I could dip the remaining section of her tail in this stuff that would stop the nasty bleeding. The girl who was holding the rat mom got bit through her CONSTRUCTION glove by this furious rat mom. And... Ugh..... that was just enough that my stomach could handle for the day. No more biting... no more bleeding... Ugh! Monica had reached her max and stepped outside for some air.

Eventually, I finished cleaning out the tank and then I was faced with another problem. How in the world am I going to get this rat mom back into the tank? My manager was kind enough to come and face Jaws, the wonder rat mom, so I did not have to move her. [YAY SHANNON!]

Ugh... my stomach is still churning as I remember the story. But, no fear... it does bring me great comfort to know that you too, my faithful reader, are out there suffering with me. [LOL. Sorry. I couldn't resist sharing.]

And that my dear friend is what I call one nasty Rat Tail Tale.