Oh, Rats!

The major thing in our house that keeps everyone occupied these days is the baby rats - all 12 of them! With 2 parents, and another young male keeping the father rat company in his cage that's 15 rats altogether.  It's funny, because 6 months ago if you had asked me if I would ever consider getting a pet rat my answer would have been a flat-out "No!" but possibly a mouse for Master B maybe when he's a teenager, since he's crazy about mice. Hmmmm.

These little ones are getting cuter by the day though, they opened their eyes on Thursday, so they've got a new lease on life now that they can actually see what they are doing and they LOVE exploring the cage, and spend a lot of time cuddled up with each other inside those cardboard tubes in the middle of paper towel rolls.  They are now covered with a nice thick coat of hair and they are learning to climb quite well.

Consider what they looked like as newborns

And now

The kids love holding them, er...usually only one at a time (the big one is a guinea-pig, by the way)

Super-cute wriggly balls of fluff

So, in about 3 and a half weeks, these little guys will be weaned and getting sold to the pet store, although we will keep one of the pure white females to breed with our pure white male.  Anybody want a pet rat?

As an aside, we bought yet another rodent today.  A little female guinea-pig to be my pet, and to be company for Miss A's lonely guinea-pig.  

Rock On

We generally try to go "somewhere" and do "something" on Sabbath afternoons, whether it is a walk along the beach or a nature walk through a bush trail, but last Sabbath afternoon, we missed on our outing, due to the Mister having had a plantar wart removed (rather viciously, I'm sure he thinks) from the heel of his foot.  Certainly walking long distances, or even short ones, was not going to happen. Although he managed to hobble around at Church, by lunchtime his whole leg was aching, so I will share with you some pictures of our afternoon's outing from the previous Sabbath, which I had meant to post earlier than this...oops.

We actually went to one of the local dive sites where there are some nice rockpools, the kids had great fun splashing some toys in them.  So, without further ado:

The pictures really don't do it justice, the sponges and tiny reef fish found in the rockpools truly are beautiful to look at.
Here's a couple of photos from the little circus we went to, also.  Before the show started he gave the kids a demonstration of feeding the monkeys and had a bit of a chat about them.

In other happenings, we decided to get another male rat because the daddy one is lonely now that he is in another cage, so we bought a little pure white one.  His name is Snowy.  It's funny how you forget how small little animals are when you first got them; we went to put Snowy into his new cage with Mousie (the daddy), which isn't specifically a rat cage, but a "small animal" cage, and he just escaped right through the bars! Well, we were ready for him luckily and he just went right into someone's hands, but that meant that he would have to go in with the mummy and babies until he was a little fatter.  Unfortunately for him, mother rat decided that he must be one of her babies and, despite obviously being weaned, she forced him to suckle along with the other babies.  he resisted very strongly at first, but by the next morning mother rat had won the fight and he was found with all the other babies, drinking milk, despite protesting often with loud squeaks.  This morning however, we were finally able to put him in with the other male without him escaping, and the two of them seem to be good friends, snuggled up together in their little hammock.
Well, such are the mundane details of my week.  I have started posting a few pics to my instagram account, if you're interested, mostly it will be about the home schooling stuff we do day to day.
Cheers, have a good week!

A Very Sheepish "Hello"

Well, it's been almost four years since our last post, how positively slack of me! Not that there's been anything major happen in that time...let's see if we can have a quick catch-up...(although you probably are aware of most of this)
*   We have a new dog, border collie x blue heeler, named Shadow.  We got him from the RSPCA when he was 8 weeks old, he's now about 2&1/2 years old.  He's supposed to be our "snake dog", you know, for protecting the yard against snakes.  So far he has proved to be a bit useless at that, but very good at finding ways to be a nuisance (this post is not short enough to list them all, trust me).
*   We bought two canaries, a male and a female, named Harry and Holly.  That night we had an earthquake. Holly died the next day, it was all just too much for her - moving house and then earthquakes and all.  So we got another female, also named Holly.  Eventually they will have babies, and that will be fun, but for now they entertain us with their gorgeous, cheerful singing.
*   We had two (female) guinea-pigs, one each for Miss A and Master B.  Master B's died.  Master R became old enough to have one, so we bought two more (females). Then those two both died earlier this year.  We subsequently bought them two rats, a male and a female.  Which leads us to the next...
*  We bought two rats, a male and a female.  They are able to breed every four weeks - YIKES! That is okay with us (well, maybe not EVERY four weeks) because it will be a good way for the boys to earn some money - the pet shop has said they will buy the babies...which leads us to the next...again...
*   The rats have had their first litter of babies! There are ten pink little wiggly jelly-bean looking things with arms and legs wriggling around and squeaking on the bottom of the cage right now.  The proud mummy and daddy have been separated (apparently she can get pregnant again the very same day/night, that might have happened already).  Interesting tidbit - having a neutering operation for a male rat will cost $190.00!!! We bought a new cage, as well as rat toys, guinea-pig igloos, and tasty rodent treats (no, I did not taste test them), and it all still cost less than that! Plus we have the option of more rat babies whenever we want.
*   Home schooling is still happening, and we love it! The college they have been enrolled in since Aleena was old enough for preschool has undergone some curriculum changes over the last couple of years, so we're moving onwards and upwards and doing our own thing, more of that over at the Jo's Home's Cool blog, if you're interested.
*   Our house seems to be full of animal cages!
*   The Mister is no longer really doing the fish thing on the farm.  It's just not cost efficient when you factor in freight costs, electricity, etc.  But...he does grow some awesome strawberries (among other things but the strawberries are sooooo good).
*   My baby died - that's Ankle (my puppy dog) by the way.  He was sick and on heart medication for about a year,  He died on Christmas Eve, about ten minutes before midnight.  It was a blessing that he didn't die on Christmas, but we still had to bury him on Christmas day.  I still cry for him almost every day.
*   The kids are growing up pretty fast, Miss A is 10, and quite a responsible young lady, Master B is 7, soon to be 8, and into everything boyish, trampolines, lego, kicking balls, teasing siblings... Master R is 4 & 1/2, and also very much a boy - a cuddly, jealous-for-attention, "helper"-in-the-kitchen, addicted to watching "little bear", stuffed-toy-elephant-collecting, thinks-himself-independent, boy.
*   Miss A has a couple of pen pals from around the world now, one in France, one in the USA, possibly one in the UK, and possibly another in Russia (we are waiting for responses) plus a good friend (also a homeschooler) she writes to who lives about 20 minutes away, we visit with them fortnightly.
Well, that's probably all you care to read for this post. I am going to head over to the homeschooling blog to update that, and then I am going to sleep.  I've had a big day. Might tell you about it tomorrow night...*yawn*

Again, awfully sorry about not posting in so long, I feel very sheepish and very baa-aaa-aaa-aaa--aaad, yes, that is a baa-aaa-aaa-aaa-aaad joke, sorry again.