our temporary pet

i hate rats and mice. as my mom can attest to, i freak out at the site of them. i have some stories. i will spare you because the one that started my fear of rats is pretty... disgusting.

 so, as many of your know, our condos have been under construction. dan went to take lucy out in the morning and came back in with a special treat. apparently the construction workers had found a domesticated rat and suspected that it was our neighbor's rat (since she owns some rats) and got it into a box. dan said that they were going to just leave it on our neighbor's door step in the cold where it would either die or eat it's way out of the box...so he "saved" it... and was going to go to work and leave me at home with a rat in a cardboard box... who could scratch and eat it's way out!!! NO WAY. i couldn't do it, i didn't want it in my house. i decided to knock on some of my neighbor's doors... who i at least knew a little, to see if someone could at least a little bit while i figured out what to do. luckily, i found someone who could take it for an hour. they took it and also went to our other neighbor's place of work (the one who we thought the rat belonged to). it wasn't hers. in the mean time, i acquired a cage from Joanne to borrow (THANK YOU SO MUCH). and we put the rat in it. i was okay with it being in the cage, trapped. arlo was fascinated with it... constantly wanted to watch it.

we thought the rat might belong to another neighbor who owns rats. once they got home later that night, they confirmed that it was not theirs either. but, that the rat was a girl and she was sick... she had a respiratory disease. by this time, i was less nervous about the rat and even found the rat to be a little cute (at least when i couldn't see the tail) at times. this neighbor gave us a lot of good information on rats and said she would try and find it a home and if she couldn't, we'd take it to the humane society. in the end, we had the rat for about 4 days and it SORT of grew on me. i even held it once. dan opened me up to it... and provided moral support. i don't miss it, but arlo sure does. it ended up finding a home and is hopefully as happy as can be. and i have overcome my fear.... a little, little bit.