fallblossom
Senior Member
I got my long haired rat from Kijiji. His name is Harley. He was advertised as 8 months old and playful. The first night he curled up in my neck and rested with me. I thought he was sweet. A few weeks later my son received warning bites (bites with no blood) and then would bite my son's fingers where there was a little blood. Today out of the blue, Harley immediately bit my arm with no warning and I bled. Afterwards, I called the humane society to see if we could surrender him today and they said they don't take surrenders until Monday.
My ten year old son was warned NOT to touch the rat and why. He ignored my warning and scritched the rat in his cage behind his ears and received a warning bite. My son flicked his nose (per instructions on rat forums when a rat bites) and then Harley attacked my son's hand tagging his index finger where he bled a lot.
Both of us treated our bite wounds with pressure to stop the bleeding, saline rinses, and a topical antibiotics with a band aid. We feel because the teeth dug into our flesh that we could potentially get rat bite fever (the rat has been on Clavamox for a URI but I don't know if it kills the bacteria that causes RBF).
Does my rat have some type of mental problem to suddenly bite us to to inflict injury? Why is he suddenly being aggressive? He doesn't bite when shoulder riding or when in my top sleeping.
NOTE: I placed Harley with one of my resident rats outside and thought they were okay because they were sniffing each other. One split second Harley attacked my resident rat slicing his stomach down to the muscle (3/4" wide). My injured rat was immediately given amoxicillin and placed in a hospital cage.
My ten year old son was warned NOT to touch the rat and why. He ignored my warning and scritched the rat in his cage behind his ears and received a warning bite. My son flicked his nose (per instructions on rat forums when a rat bites) and then Harley attacked my son's hand tagging his index finger where he bled a lot.
Both of us treated our bite wounds with pressure to stop the bleeding, saline rinses, and a topical antibiotics with a band aid. We feel because the teeth dug into our flesh that we could potentially get rat bite fever (the rat has been on Clavamox for a URI but I don't know if it kills the bacteria that causes RBF).
Does my rat have some type of mental problem to suddenly bite us to to inflict injury? Why is he suddenly being aggressive? He doesn't bite when shoulder riding or when in my top sleeping.
NOTE: I placed Harley with one of my resident rats outside and thought they were okay because they were sniffing each other. One split second Harley attacked my resident rat slicing his stomach down to the muscle (3/4" wide). My injured rat was immediately given amoxicillin and placed in a hospital cage.