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My newest rats are named Dawn and Eve. They were born Dec 15, 1999 and their eyes had just opened the morning I adopted them. They are incredibly sweet. I have a picture of them when they were barely larger than mice. I'll add more pictures as time passes.
My two older rats were adopted October 3, 1999. There were somewhere around 4 or 5 weeks then. Their names are Atolykos and Telemakhos. Tolly is the black hooded one, named after the famous Greek theif because he kept snatching food from his brother. Telly, the blonde, is named after Odysseus's son (and Atolykos' nephew) because he seems to have no willpower of his own, just following his brother around and doing what he does (if you read the Odyssey this is pretty much what Telemakhos was doing the whole book). Tolly is very outgoing, and inspired me to write some stories from his point of view. I intended them to be ongoing, but then got too busy to continue. My film got ruined so I don't have any pictures of them as babies, but I have one of Tolly playing with Eve, and will add more soon. I had to leave my boys behind with my mother when I went off to college, since my apartment was only willing to let me take one set of rats. The boys were originally supposed to be paired with the girls to make more rats, but the girls turned out to have some sort of growth impediment, or possibly they're just a slightly smaller variety, so I couldn't breed them because I didn't want to risk their health. That turned out to be a stoke of luck; I don't know what I would've done if I had 11 rats when I had to leave for school.
I got my second rat, Spryte, in summer of '97, or '96, I can't remember, and lost her only about half a year after my first rat, Gizmo (see below). As you can see from the picture above, piano seems to run in my family. :) I bought Spryte to keep Giz company, but they didn't get along so I ended up with two lone rats in seperate (and expensive) cages. I named her Spryte because her pink eyes and all white fur reminded me of Faery-land pixies.
This was beloved hooded rat, Gizmo, my first of many pet rats.
In the spring of '96 a teacher bought a snake "for the class"
against the will of the students (typical public school) and it
was being fed baby rats. The students arranged an activist group
in protest. Every day at lunch one of them snuck back into the
classroom and attempted to rescue a rat before the snake ate it.
A friend of a friend stole 
Gizmo, then carried her for the rest of
the school day in his pants pocket. He later fed her milk from
an eye dropper (she was too young and should not have been
separated from her mother yet, but then I guess they weren't
considering that when they labeled her "snake food"). Eventually
his mother discovered her and made him give her to my friend. He
named her "Gizmo" after the critter in "Gremlins" who will eat
anything(if you knew my rat you'd understand). After a while his
mother decided he wasn't taking good enough care of her and she
landed in my hands. She was a loving members of the family until
early 1999, when she had to be put to sleep due to serious tumors.
I'll never know a rat with her kind of character again. I have more
pictures of Gizmo, playing in my glove, and
another in the same glove with her cute little head
poking out.
Last updated: 2/04/2001 5:58PM EST
