web analytics

Kung Hei Fat Choi, ratties!

jack black victorian rat catcher
Happy Chinese new year! It is the Year of the Rat, about which I shall offer no snark. For I am a rat, zodialogically speaking. It is my year. You hear that, Fate? MY YEAR. So back the hell off already.

Also, I like rats. One of our first outings together, I made Uncle B take me to a rat show.

Thinkest thou I be a-shitting of thee? Nay, ’tis not so!

Mice and rats are clean, cheerful little animals and have probably been kept as pets since forever. But this man, Jack Black, is the father of modern rodent fancy. He was Queen Victoria’s rat-catcher and he made a habit of setting aside and breeding any interesting specimens he ran across.

Beatrix Potter and Victoria herself may have been owners of Mr Black’s fine rodents.

Careful breeding of mutations in the ordinary brown rat (a coat known as agouti to fanciers) eventually resulted in dozens of well-defined variations. These are broadly classified as self (solid colors), marked (banded, hooded, siamese and the like) and other (to include varieties such as rex, which have a frizzy coat, and dumbo, which have stupid ears). Fancy mice come in all these varieties, plus tans (solid colors with tan bellies) and satins, whose coats have a beautiful, almost metallic sheen.

Mouse and rat breeding for show became a popular hobby among people with an interest in livestock but not enough room for cows. There are regular shows, with judges and ribbons and cups and grudges and all that. It’s pretty exciting, because rodent generations are so accelerated compared to other sorts of animals. A mutation can become a breed really fast.

I considered breeding fancy mice in my twenties, but nixed it on account of I am not ruthless enough. A proper mouse breeder culls any disappointing specimens as soon as their characteristics appear. Generally by crushing they little skulls.

It is a thorny one. The American Rat and Mouse Club frowns on culling, while the American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association refuses to take a position.

Yes, American. What, did you think this was going to be a “those silly Brits” post? We took to the hobby like mice to peanutbutter.

I wouldn’t consider keeping a rat. They make lovely, intelligent pets, but they only live a few years — just long enough to get really attached — and they get dreadful diseases. Mice don’t live any longer and get the same diseases, but you don’t get so attached. They’re like house plants: feed and water them and they’re fun to look at. I’ve kept mice from time to time since I was a sprog.

So now you know something! Gung ho bok choi!

Comments


Comment from porknbean
Time: February 7, 2008, 1:31 pm

Year of the rat, huh? That explains the political atmosphere. The three biggest rats are front runners. Apologies to rats.

Not sure I would want a rat. Their tails give me the willies and they have no bladder control.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 7, 2008, 1:32 pm

No, they can control their bladders fine. It’s poop control they haven’t got.

That tail thing, though. I’ll give you that. Brrr.


Comment from porknbean
Time: February 7, 2008, 2:04 pm

Hmmm….a couple of people told me they are incontinent. Oh, and I was watching ‘Dirty Jobs’ and I coulda swore when Mike was working with the exterminator, he said the same thing. I had this vision that they walked around with piss dripping down their legs.
So if they do have some bladder control, I wonder if they can be litter trained?

My friend works for a pharmaceutical company and ‘works’ with mice and rats on a daily basis. Says the mice are mean little bastards (um..I would be too if you stuck needles in me to inject poisons)so she isn’t as bugged about doing the experiments on them, BUT the rats are a different story. Says it is hard to stick all of the lines in them because they are really smart and you get to know each of their personalities.
There is one person on staff in charge of euthanizing.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 7, 2008, 2:17 pm

Well, my mice always peed in the same spot. ‘Sall I’m saying. Wikipedia says rats can be litter box trained.

We were given a pair of University rats that had been the smartest at running a maze. They were such egregiously evil mean little bastards that my mother euthanized them. Unfortunately, she did it by hooking their box up to the tailpipe of a car. The vet turned a little green. “Lady, do you know you probably roasted those rats?”


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: February 7, 2008, 2:38 pm

I’m not what you would call a natural bird lover. In fact I’ve managed to spend most of my life more or less indifferent to the little blighters but over Christmas her Ladyship infected me with Mary Poppins disease – a morbid compulsion to feed the wretches.

I’ve grown quite obsessive about it (as is a badger’s wont) even to the point of carefully pouring the fat off any meat I’ve been cooking, soaking bread in it and feeding it to the twittering devils, the following day.

I have now, two battalions of deadly attack robins, a squadron of fully armed blue tits and at least two wings of sparrows and thrushes, ready and eager to kill at the mere twitch of a whisker.

Anyway… on Monday, while the water boiled for my morning tea, I wandered outside and set down not just bread, but some left over pork, from the Sunday roast. Five minutes later, in broad daylight, bold as brass and twice as heavy, a large, fluffy rat waddled up the path, took a leisurely dip at the meat, seized the piece he most fancied, then waddled sedately back to his lair – which appears to be behind the summerhouse.

I have to confess I just laughed.

I think Auntie was testing me when she insisted we went to the London Rat and Mouse Club’s annual show. Fortunately for me, mammals don’t trouble me at all and I rather took to the rats which, on the whole, seem to be a lot less trouble than weasels.

Happy New Year, fellow barbarians!


Comment from Pupster
Time: February 7, 2008, 2:49 pm

mmmmm….roasted rats


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 7, 2008, 2:51 pm

Hee hee. Uncle Badger has blue tits. Hey, Tits, I fixed your typo.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 7, 2008, 5:59 pm

“…two battalions of deadly attack robins, a squadron of fully armed blue tits and at least two wings of sparrows and thrushes,…”

The imagery! Blue Tits – wafting through the chill air….

Badger – my dear departed Mom taught me that when you start feeding birds in Winter, you have to continue until Spring or some will die. They come to depend on the food you provide, and if its not there, they waste precious energy doing new searches. Boy, that pork grease has mucho food/caloric value. Good deal, Sire.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 7, 2008, 6:14 pm

Don’t worry, McGoo. We’re on track to have the world’s only chickadees with coronary artery disease. The neighbors next door are feeding them, too. We’re kind of in a Tit War here.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 7, 2008, 6:19 pm

But…but…what color are the enemy Tits?

La, la, la…One wore blue and one wore gray…la, la, la…

Chickadee cholesterol. What is the world coming to?


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 7, 2008, 6:27 pm

Oh, I think we’re poaching each other’s tits, more likely. Or, to put it another way, our tits are double-dipping.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 7, 2008, 6:33 pm

England is strange. This Tit War seems to be run by Milo Minderbinder. Everybody gets a share…


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 7, 2008, 6:41 pm

As we speak, they’re prepping the basement floor for painting. It’s forty minutes past booze o’clock, I’m dry as a bone, and they’re belt sanding my last nerve ending.

God, this year sucks.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 7, 2008, 7:22 pm

What are they doing – sanding the concrete? Don’t they know it’s Booze-thirty?

Tell ’em to shake the paint real good, overturn the cans, and get the squeegees out. They’ll be done in minutes.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 7, 2008, 7:33 pm

They’re gone.

I had asphalt tile there before. It was pretty cool — in the center of the floor was a mosaic of a dart bullseying a dartboard — but the tiles were coming up and the real estate agent said, “asphalt tile…make it go away!” So there was glue and stuff to deal with.

But now…BOOOOOOOOOZE!


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 7, 2008, 7:45 pm

Ah! I have an inkling now! Sanding. Floor. Concrete. Tile.

Drink, Weaz!

Y’know – your agent sure does spend your equity $ easily. Maybe she should buy the house.

So they paint it tomorrow, it dries a day or two and outgasses, and then its camping time.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 7, 2008, 8:09 pm

Well, there’s the bug guy, too.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 7, 2008, 8:25 pm

Well, tell him there’s not room enough for him to camp out too! By invitation only!


Comment from porknbean
Time: February 7, 2008, 10:40 pm

Badger has blue tits and weasel has bugs. Whatcha got, millipedes? Spiders? Crabs? Dead squirrel carcasses in your walls?


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 7, 2008, 11:22 pm

Hey, look! Science Daily says feeding the blue tits causes them to breed better in the spring! Badger may be onto something here.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080205191210.htm

Wow. Well, I know if I didn’t eat anything all winter, I wouldn’t be up to it come spring either.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 8, 2008, 7:12 am

Powder post beetles, PnB. Which is a *good* thing — the real estate lady thought it was termites. The difference is about $500.

So you’re saying we can look forward to a tit explosion in Spring, McGoo? Hm. Didja notice those blue tits aren’t the least bit blue? I wonder if they’re called that because they’re a bit sad.


Comment from porknbean
Time: February 8, 2008, 10:25 am

Yep, much better bug. Last house we had termites, them basement camel crickets, and brown recluse. We were overrun with the recluse. I am surprised and thankful that none of us were ever bitten.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 8, 2008, 10:31 am

Ugh. My mother’s house has termites and beaucoup de recluses. I still own it. It’s empty now — my tenant finally got tired of living so far back in the woods — and I’m just waiting for it to fall down.

Hopefully, all the recluses will get smushed in the process.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 8, 2008, 10:45 am

I noticed the lack of blue in the Tit color scheme – but I figured it was just a trick to fool me, so I said nothing. I’m biding my time until the main attack comes.

It’s a pity to let a property go downhill, Weaz, but I can understand the motivation (or lack thereof) to maintain it – it being so far away.

Not that you have nothing to do right now, but you might put it on the market and take the pittance it’ll bring as a fixer-upper or re-hab project for someone. or sell it to one of those “we buy ugly houses” places.

Or I could just extract my nose from your business.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 8, 2008, 10:52 am

It’s a crap house, McGoo. My stepfather built it himself in the seventies. It’s very…seventies. And now it’s falling to bits. My last tenant, who lived there for free, kept trying to extract large sums of money from me to fix it up. Eh. It’s not worth fixing up.

But here’s the thing: the land is very cool. It’s almost sixty acres of woods that comprises the entire bowl of a valley. The road dead-ends at the house. So no matter what happens all around you, you will only see your own property when you look out the door.

Biggest drawback: water. Not enough of it. But for what I pay in property taxes, it’s worth holding on to. Plus, I promised my mother I’d split the money with my worthless brother if I ever sold it.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 8, 2008, 11:07 am

Like I said – my nose out of your bidness. I figured there was a good reason for you to hang onto it.

A sixty-acre valley might give a rich developer or hunter a mighty, um, er, reason for excitement some day. Then you’ll be glad you didn’t listen to me.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 8, 2008, 11:14 am

The man who owns the 300 acres next to it would love to buy it up. He wanted to put a trailer park on his part <shudder>, but not enough water. He tried to get my mother to go in on city water, but she wasn’t keen on having a trailer park next door. Also, she hated his guts with a flamey passion.

Which pretty much rules out selling to him. I’m an atheist, but I’m not risking the angry shade of Mom.


Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: February 8, 2008, 11:26 am

Zodiomologically speaking, I’m a horse. Which is fitting because I have such a massive…appetite.
I love feeding birds. There’s nothing more invigorating than watching tits in the morning as you’re stood there in your underpants scratching your nuts and waiting for the kettle to boil.
My favourties are starlings. They – at least here – go about feeding like a special forces troop rescuing a hosage. One minute there’re just a few stupid, fat, stupid, fat pigeons strutting around, and the next, seemingly out of nogoddamnwhere three or four stalings swoop down, two or three hang around the lawn periphery in strategic positions whislt the other one peck-peck-pecks food in quick succession. And then they’re gone again. In and out. And the fat pigeons carry on oblivious.
Happy Year of the Rat.

England is strange.

You bet your ass.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 8, 2008, 12:28 pm

There’s nothing more invigorating than watching tits in the morning as you’re standing there in your underpants scratching your nuts and waiting for the kettle to boil.

By God! there’s still something for me to look forward to!

Gibby – you’re my Hero today!


Comment from Dave in Texas
Time: February 8, 2008, 12:59 pm

Powder post beetles… interesting critters. Little piles of powerdery sawdust around pin sized holes in the wood. I think you have to fumigate to off em.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 8, 2008, 1:09 pm

That’s the one, Dave. Exterminator said boric acid would do it. Whatevs.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 8, 2008, 1:13 pm

Anyone ever se how they fumigate houses in California? Maybe they do it this way elsewhere – I’ve never seen it, though.

They put an honest-to-fuck zip-up(?) rubber BAG completely around and over the house and then sock it to it – and then let it sit overnight. Nothing survives.

It looks hilarious.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: February 8, 2008, 2:14 pm

Mmm… I’ve known a few Californians I’d have left inside.


Comment from porknbean
Time: February 8, 2008, 2:18 pm

the land is very cool. It’s almost sixty acres of woods that comprises the entire bowl of a valley.

Ooooo….land. Worth holding onto.
Maybe one day, you and the badger might need somewhere to escape. The way the Archbishop of Knuckleheadedness is speaking, he is ready to hand the keys to the caliphate.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: February 8, 2008, 2:29 pm

Get back in the kitchen, daughter of Satan, or it’ll be stoning for you!

Oh, sorry porknbean, that’s next year’s line 😉


Comment from Dave in Texas
Time: February 8, 2008, 2:36 pm

Yeah, the building I used to work in had lots of wood trim, and lots of those little holes. It was impractical to fumigate (I think) cause it took a couple of days and the stuff is highly bad for people in addition to beetles. After about 10 years they pretty much had died off.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 8, 2008, 2:44 pm

Hey, last I read on the ‘InnerTubes that this doofus Archbishop-or-whatever might be asked to get out of town!

This makes my heart soar like a hawk!

I secretly still do not believe the Bits (the real ones, I mean, not the imported ones) will stand for this 11th-century Sharia crap much longer. But, I am forever the optimist, and usually wrong…


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 8, 2008, 2:55 pm

Make that “Brits”…


Comment from porknbean
Time: February 8, 2008, 3:20 pm

Get back in the kitchen, daughter of Satan, or it’ll be stoning for you!

Heh. I can just picture him saying that.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2258/2251224582_c4e221916c_o.jpg

I really think islam is a fast growing religion because of the power it gives nasty little men over women.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 8, 2008, 3:59 pm

Little, angry, sexually immature and frustrated men.

That sums it up.

The one great advantage we decadent Westerners have over them is that they can be relied upon to think with their anger, or their dick. Neither one measures up to a brain…

I am growing to despise them as a class, and that in itself is making me uncomfortable.


Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: February 8, 2008, 4:11 pm

Gibby – you’re my Hero today!

Finally.

My god, Dr. Williams has opened a big can of plutonium-fed shitworms.
Even the BBC hasn’t been able to ignore it.
Time to step down, midgetdick. You found the limit, now fuck off.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 8, 2008, 4:17 pm

An excellent end to a generally unpleasant week – yes?


Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: February 8, 2008, 4:28 pm

Abu Hamza is on his way to America as well. That’s good news too. Not for you, maybe, what with him soon to become an icon of the anti-America crowd/the Left, but certainly good news for us.
So, thanks once again.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 8, 2008, 4:52 pm

Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll visit Baltimore.

http://mitchieville.blogspot.com/2008/02/baltimore-great-placeto-die.html


Comment from porknbean
Time: February 8, 2008, 5:41 pm

Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll visit Baltimore.

Nah, send him to Meacham (sp?) MO and have him pass out tickets.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 8, 2008, 6:49 pm

Hey boys and girls:

There’s a leprosy outbreak in Springfield Arkansas. Drudge had it but the link died. Lonewacko has it though.

http://lonewacko.com/blog/index.html

Nothing to panic about. it’s just folks from the marshall Islands working in Arkansas at a Tysons chicken processing factory. You know – like what we barbecue, and what I put in my Chicken Vegatable Soup A La McGoo today?


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 8, 2008, 6:51 pm

Marshall, Vegetable ….duh.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 8, 2008, 7:00 pm

Leprosy. Uff.

I read a creepy little book once about a man who caught leprosy. Supposedly true. In the twenties or thirties, I think. He was American; I forget how he caught it. Anyhow, he went to a leper colony without telling his family, and his doctor faked a ‘fatal car accident’ so they wouldn’t know and wouldn’t try to follow. He claimed that was very common.

I forgot the rest. I think he lost a few toes but got his own hut, so w00t!


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 8, 2008, 7:23 pm

I read Hawaii by Whatshisface, so I “know” and remember only what was in the book. I remember that it can take it’s own sweet time for years, nibbling here and there, and then burning you down in a few weeks.

In the book, a Chinese woman’s husband gets it, she accompanied him to the leper colony, and stays with him for years until he dies. For the rest of her life (living in Hawaii) she checks over her entire body every night before bed, looking for the crap.

I also seem to recall that it is actually a plant infestation inside you – or sumpin.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 8, 2008, 10:45 pm

Nope. Not a plant – just a bacterium. Kinda grows like a plant though.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: February 10, 2008, 9:36 pm

Up here in the Rockies, we have a charming little rodent called a pack-rat. Actually, we have zillions of them, and they are ballsy little bastards. Plus, their nests are made up of the weirdest stuff (like pieces of plants mixed in with frozen buffalo turds and, for decoration, little pieces of insulated wire they found in your pickup’s engine compartment that you probably didn’t need anyway) and they build them in the most inappropriate places, like atop your tractor manifold, which, when started, fills the barn with just the most tantalizing odor.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: February 10, 2008, 9:38 pm

Leprosy? That is so last week.

Elephantiasis, now there’s a disease we can all get behind.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 10, 2008, 9:45 pm

Yeah, but Tyson Foods won’t employ anyone with it, the bastards! They just cheap out with these Marshall Island lepers. I mean, holy Cecil B. Demille!


Pingback from S. Weasel
Time: February 13, 2008, 12:10 pm

[…] Me, I’m looking to stick my nose in a number of places it doesn’t belong. I need a distraction this year and this could be more fun than breeding show rats. If you know of vulnerable or up-and-coming conservatives, get out the word. Maybe we can use that internet thing the kids are all het up about. […]

Write a comment

(as if I cared)

(yeah. I'm going to write)

(oooo! you have a website?)


Beware: more than one link in a comment is apt to earn you a trip to the spam filter, where you will remain -- cold, frightened and alone -- until I remember to clean the trap. But, hey, without Akismet, we'd be up to our asses in...well, ass porn, mostly.


<< carry me back to ol' virginny