Okay, are you with me? Good. We have a resident rat. At least, I hope it is "rat", not "rats." I enjoy living in denial. Fortunately it is an outdoor country rat that is NOT residing in our house. Instead it has some sort of den near the concrete foundation of our house, about ten feet from the birdfeeder. Mr. Ratty is living the good life. His meals are delivered daily, and he stuffs his cheeks with birdseed and runs back and forth to his subterranean home, stockpiling for the long winter.
Stuff those cheeks! Stuff, stuff, stuff!
Cheeks stuffed, he takes off for home.
He has done this so much that he's worn a deep furrow in the snow. I call it "The Rat Trail."
A chickadee on the right watches as Mr. Ratty legs it for the safety of his hole.
Yesterday, a red squirrel was on the feeder when Mr. Ratty showed up. I wondered who would dominate and take control of the feeder. Surely the obnoxious squirrel, evicted from the walls of our house this fall?
Nope.That's your rat excitement for today! Never say I don't give you variety on this blog.
PS: The photos would be a lot better if I cleaned my office window!
PS: The photos would be a lot better if I cleaned my office window!
Uh, yeah, I'm rodent phobic.
ReplyDeleteLove the trail. You'd love the igloos Duncan builds when I give him paper towels. Intricate, fascinating things that he spends hours enhancing. When I clean the cage and he has to start over again, you can see him tapping his little feetsies in frustration.
Rats are not to be trifled with, as Mr. Squirrel discovered.
I really like rats, not that I want a plague of them infesting my house (I mean wild, not pets. I'd love a pet rat but I fear that with all the cats we have.) Mr. Ratty visits every day and I actually find him cute and enjoyable to watch. The trail cracks me up!
ReplyDeleteI'd love to watch Duncan for a few hours.
Mr. Ratty - that is so cute!
ReplyDeleteActually, I think rats would make great pets. Maybe they need a different name to erase the "RAT" stigma.
ReplyDeleteI'm happy you like your rat ... i wonder if it's a female?
The dogs have killed two here. One pretty big one and one smaller one. I do feel sad about it ... but grossed out at the same time.
These pictures could have been taken at my house this summer - except that Mr. Ratty started to bring friends and got so brave that he would walk right beside us while we were having dinner on the patio! We ended up putting a small sprinkler underneath the bird feeder since he didn't like to get wet. The birds enjoyed splashing in the sprinkler, though!
ReplyDeleteEventually he was caught and relocated, and the friends gave up too. I am VERY rodent phobic, so this was not the happiest moment of my summer!
Rats always scared me - I keep thinking they would be biters!
ReplyDeleteMuskrat, muskrat candlelight
ReplyDeleteDoin' the town and doin' it right
In the evenin'
It's pretty pleasin'
Muskrat Susie, Muskrat Sam
Do the jitterbug out in muskrat land
And they shimmy
And Sammy's so skinny
And they whirled and they twirled and they tangoed
Singin' and jingin' the jango
Floatin' like the heavens above
It looks like muskrat love
Michelle, if Mr. Ratty starts walking up to me while I am dining on the patio, we're going to be trapping and relocating too!!!! :)
ReplyDeleteMo, Tristan and Sophie love muskrats. That is, they love trying to assassinate them.
And Mr. Ratty COULD be Ms. Ratty... hard to tell from my office window! :)
And my word verification is "micier". HAHAHA!
RUR - ratty underground railroad.
ReplyDelete