very skittish girls, seem to be getting more so

[Petunia]

in early January I got two baby girls from a rescue, they are half sisters, born the end of Sept. so, under 4 mos old when I got them

In the rescue, one of the girls was always escaping, and apparently was just grabbed up and stuffed back in the cage, because she HATES being handled at all, and will run from my hands (she will also bite them but only if she doesn't realize they are my hands, she is a pink eyed girl with very poor eyesight, which only makes her more nervous )

I honestly did not spend a lot of time working with them when I first got them, because Elyse, my older girl who passed away, was sick and also, frankly, enjoyed my company, so I just spent more time with her.

I can see now what what a mistake that was, believe me.

The girls have seemed to become even more afraid of me as time goes by. They will come for treats, they know their names, they know simple phrases such as, come downstairs (for when I leave a bowl of veggies on the bottom of the cage) or alternatively, go UPstairs, if I've left it on top LOL

they know "it's time to come out" and "it's time to go home"....
but they still do not seem to know or realize that I am not going to hurt them.

the stupid thing is, when a rat acts afraid of me, it blows my confidence and I almost become a little afraid of them...I can't explain why or how that happens, but it seems like fear is very contagious :/

what would be the best way to try to turn things around? I have a bonding scarf and have put the little ones in it, but they never settle down and relax, they just kind of wait for me to let them out. Sometimes the braver of the two will come out and then try to jump off my shoulder...


I have an older girl Pippa who is about er 21 mos old now or so? she was always a bit on the shy side, although she tolerates me picking her up and will on rare occasions climb up on my shoulder (and bite my hair, sometimes, goober!)
but she seems to have gotten more nervous around me since adding the younger girls!

I am possibly/probably getting two girls later this week, they are just about a year old and are described as active but friendly- can be handled, and apparently get along well with other girls (they are in a colony with 4 others right now)

I am hoping that these new girls like me enough to convince the other 3 that I am not evil!!

it's sad to see them run from me. sometimes it almost seems like a bad habit, I think Emma, at least, knows that I am not going to hurt them

and they also know that they can have a TON of out time, they have had up to 6 hrs out of the cage, although they usually "put themselves away" at some point, but if I leave the cage open, will come back out later... so they can't be worried about that.

I just don't know why they don't see me as the lovable giant that I am :lol:

 

[jorats]

Your little ones come out in big open spaces if i remember correctly? I’ve noticed with my own group, that big open spaces is a more scary place and if anything moves in that open space, it’s even scarier so when you move about that gives them a pang of fear which is 100% unrelated to you.
So you could do one of two things or try both. In the past, I used to force the skittish rats to bond to me by always picking them up, putting them in my shirt for a couple of hours a day while I watched TV or read a book. This seemed to work fast enough to bond them to me and I realize now that it’s a form of flooding in dogs which is actually not a good thing. But I often wonder if the rats are truly afraid like flooding a dog or if it’s different in their case because we are not exposing them to super scary something but instead we put them down our shirts which is actually a comfortable quiet area for the rats.
But what I do now is I let them be. I let them come to me no matter how long it takes. I make sure there is always noise around which helps with sudden fear. It takes a few months for them to come around and they always do at some point but the big difference is that I have huge numbers so the skittish rats see me play with the brave ones, they see the brave ones run all over me and I’m preoccupied anyway loving up the brave ones. I think if I was just sitting off to the side with just skittish rats while I twiddled my thumbs, I’d probably do the down the shirt once again.

 

[Petunia]

thanks so much Jo!

now, I too, used to do the down the shirt or in the bonding scarf (the ones I make that go around your neck) and it always seemed to work pretty well- but then the rats I had then were more nervous

and not actually scared. they were like, just inexperienced with humans.



the two girls I got from the rescue were def mishandled. Their experience taught them that humans can't be trusted.
I wasn't really able to get their full story, but from what I've pieced together, these unexpected babies ended up in a shelter (dog and cat shelter) where the owner of the rescue works full time. Not a good place for rats... they rarely have a separate room where they can keep small animals, unless they are set up for them- and very very few are.~ I'm not blaming the rescue, they did the best they could under difficult circumstances!


Patty, I was told, was always escaping the cage, and for her safety, I am sure they had to do whatever was necessary to get her back in the cage before she ended up being killed by a cat or dog..

She was clearly grabbed at and forced back into the cage, possibly tricked with tasty treats, since she will grab at those and run... She will not lick things off my fingers, she tries to bite it off so she can run away. She just does not trust human hands at all!

Can't say I blame her...


It wasn't til just before I got her, that they were able to move the rats to a person's home. They were not there for very long, and it appears very little if any work was done to socialize these girls.

I had been hoping for happy little social girls that would get along with Pippa and Elyse. Well they got along great with my resident rats, but they do not like me at all lol.

I was nervous about my decision to get more girls, friendly ones, but now I'm feeling a lot better about it.

I do think the scared bubbins will come around when they see other rats playing with me.

I am going to make their available space smaller, as well- I have to, anyway, to do intros in a few days (new girls are arriving tomorrow)


Elyse was very friendly and Patty and Emma were more brave when she was here, but in the month or so before she passed away, she did not want to be in the rat room with the other girls,

she wanted to be out in the living room with just me.

that's when the little ones started to regress. While I was spending more time with Elyse.


I will move the TV or a radio into the rat room too. I try talking to the rats, but my voice is terribly squeaky from the pneumonia, still recovering, and anytime I talk too much, I start coughing. So it would be good to have some other noises in there. My apt is very very quiet!