fenshae
Well-Known Member
A year ago, around the end of May, I got a phone call from HSSNM saying, "hey, so...we found your phone number buried in some paperwork, and it says you do rat rescue, right? So, great. We just got a couple hundred rats from a hoarding situation. How can you help us?"
The experience that followed was, without resorting to dramatics, life-changing. Very long story (which most of you are familiar with) short, a woman's four+ mixed-gender pet rats escaped, went feral, and bred like crazy in her home for an indefinite period of time. Hundreds were pulled from the house, but only 42 managed to be rescued, through the combined efforts of myself, Little Mischief Rescue, and a slew of people here in New Mexico, including a rockstar of a private pilot who actually airlifted the rats to Washington. The situation was totally surreal and magical and I have never been prouder of my state when so many strangers stepped in to help. It was a huge turning point for me as a person and as a small-scale rescuer, I made a lot of friends in the process, and it was pretty awesome.
But at the forefront of the whole rescue proceedings were three little PEWs that came home with me: Locke, Stock, and Beryl.
Locke had what we assume was a sudden heart attack a few weeks after he came home with me. Beryl lasted just shy of a year and died of CHF. Last night Stock went to join his brothers.
Stock was...well, a character. He was a bully who would fight with anybody, and nearly always lost. He was almost bipolar with his mood swings, going from contentedly snuggling to tearing into his buddy with no provocation -- but over time, the mood swings died down a lot and he finally resigned himself to (begrudging) acceptance of Basil as alpha.
Bizarrely, despite his weird actions against rats, he was a total cuddle-bug with people. You wouldn't expect a rat that had lived its entire life feral living off of god-knows-what to love people so much, but he totally did. He was very licky and would kiss your hand when you held him.
Stock and his brothers kept me on my toes. All the fighting meant there was always a ton of first aid to do, cleaning up cuts and abscesses. I learned more about rat first aid from that trio than I have in all my years of rat owning. Others may have given up on them and kept them separate, but I firmly believe that they were happier with each other than they would've been alone, despite the occasional messy squabble. Still, Stock was so scarred-up from all the fights that he was actually missing whole chunks of fur on his back end.
In the last couple months, Stock and Beryl began to slow down a lot. I had actually expected Stock to go first, as I'd always assumed he was older. But once Beryl was gone, Stock aged rapidly. He started experiencing odd symptoms this past Thursday night, occasional head-tilting and walking very strangely. I put him on antibiotics in case it was an ear infection, but it just didn't seem right. It wasn't so much that his head was tilting as that his body was actually leaning in that direction, and he seemed to have lost some coordination in one paw. After watching him, it seemed more and more likely that it was a stroke he had recovered from.
So he got lots of snuggle time this week. Lots of yummy treats (I learned that he loved potato chips, but hated bananas). He would snuggle in the blankets next to me while I read, or sit on my lap watching TV, or ride around on my shoulder when I made dinner. Also, miraculously, he buried the hatchet with Basil; they were together more often than not, and Stock always found his way to the bottom of every rat pile. Back in the days before Basil was the Godfather, he used to be a nursemaid, and it was sweet to see that side of him come out again towards a rat he spent so much time fighting with.
Last night I called for everyone to get their dinner, and only 7 noses pressed through the bars. I knew right then. Stock was always the last one to come when called, but he always did come.
I found him in one of the nest boxes. It looked like another stroke, judging from the way he was lying and the burst blood vessels in one eye.
He's with his brothers now and, with him, the the last of my hoarding boys. It's been such a crazy year, it's hard to believe they're all gone.
