Beautiful Bruce

This is Bruce!

Bruce was tea rat this morning, which meant she came to bed for cuddles while we were waiting for the morning tea to cool!

And yes, Bruce is a "she"!

Bruce was rehomed to me by a friend whose friend had rescued "him" from somewhere. "He" was thought to be brain-damaged, as "he" kept swaying "his" head from side to side. "He" had also exhibited unusual behaviour - "he"'d been waggling "his" ears!

My friend had her suspicions that her friend (whose expertise is in rabbits, not rats), may have been misinformed about the little "fellow".

This was indeed the case. Bruce arrived at my house and after the briefest of glances I noted an absence of balls and 2 neat rows of nipples down her tummy. The swaying head is something very common in pink-eyed rats (the eyes go a bit weird with the flash, but her eyes are absolutely fine), as they have relatively poor eyesight and swaying from side to side makes things move relative to each other and helps with depth perception. The ear waggling was simple enough to interpret - a young female rat in season trying to attract a buck to mate with her!

I revised my plans to put her in with my young boys and she missed out on the opportunity of the party of a lifetime, and instead settled her with my young girls. She's settled right in and is a lovely part of the family!

But the name Bruce had stuck by then, so Bruce she is!

She also has the distinction of being the last rat into the house before we closed our doors to new arrivals. We've had to do this for a while because we now have so many and so many old ones who need care, that we simply can't take any more (especially large rescues of older rats) until we have more space available - otherwise we won't be able to care for them.

She's a special little lady - sweet natured, and we're very glad she came aboard just before we closed our doors!