Christmas rat

I saw a video on youtube not too long ago of a pet rat doing all kinds of amazing tricks. The video actually made it look like fun to own a rat. I even brought it up to Trey as a possible Christmas present for Perrin. Even though I showed the video to Trey ("See? It's cute! And fuzzy! And smart!"), he wasn't convinced. So I filed the "pet rat" idea away with the rest of my list of things that are unlikely to ever happen (along with "Perrin learning to close the dang door when he goes to the bathroom" and "Brielle going to sleep without needing to have a story, a kiss, a prayer, a cup of water, and 5,000 stuffed animals." Some battles just can't be won.)

Fast forward to today. The kids decided to set out a live trap sometime recently. Since we live in a neighborhood in the middle of town, I wasn't too concerned about actually catching anything. They checked the trap today, and guess what? We were the new owners of a pet rat... for a few hours, anyway. They named him Little Paws and stuck pieces of bread through the cage to feed him. He sat happily munching in his cage for most of the afternoon until Trey made it home from work. 

I didn't want to set him free at our house where he might decide to crawl under the crawlspace and make himself cozy in our walls and nibble on our wires. And the kids were horrified at the possibility of Trey killing their "pet." So we found a wooded area far away from any other houses and set him free. The kids caught one last glimpse of him as he climbed up a tree (which I thought was weird that he went straight up a tree. Apparently I don't know much about rats. We'll consider it our science lesson for today.)

Kuddos to Trey for going along with our crazy scheme to relocate the rat, which was a lot nicer for Little Paws than what Trey actually wanted to do with him. Maybe next year he'll even reconsider the pet rat idea... we do have experience now, after all!  

It's kind of cute, don't you think?