Dumbo Rats

Who knew there were so many varieties of pet rats?

At some point while I was researching pet rats - but after I'd already purchased and put Hailey's new rats "on hold" at the pet store, awaiting her birthday - I read about "dumbo rats" online.

They are so cute! They have big ears, like dumbo. :)

Owen also was enthralled with the pictures of dumbo rats, so he and I decided that since I had bought a cage large enough for twelve rats....we'd get two more.





Owen's dumbo rat - Chewbacca! (Guess who the Star Wars fan in our family is....).

Here is Grace, my rat.

She is a blue dumbo rex. "Rex" means that she was born with curly hair. It is not as curly now, but she has extremely soft, thick fur - and curly whiskers!

She is a real sweetheart. Extremely gentle and affectionate and loves to just snuggle with me.

If I let her out to roam the room a bit she just crawls up onto my lap and snuggles in for a rest.

Grace and Skittles, each jockeying for the inner track on the wheel.


The rats will run together but whoever is on the outside track eventually goes flying off...and then gets back on again and they keep hopping over each other, to get to the inner track again.








These spoiled rats are constantly having their cage revamped and updated...and new toys added!

Hailey's 10th Birthday

On March 1st it was my daughter's 10th birthday. I can't believe it's been 10 years since I became a mom!

What she wanted more than anything was....pet rats! Like many people, I've always been a little creeped out by rats - those long tails....but after reading online and talking to someone in a pet store I decided they sounded pretty neat.

Apparently rats love people and respond to them, much the way that dogs do. They often are very affectionate, almost never bite, and learn their names and often will come when called.

I have also read that pet rats are as different from city rats as dogs are from wolves.

It took quite a bit of doing - given that I got a huge cage for them so that they would have a lot of room - but I managed to pull off a complete and total surprised for Hailey...who had been told there was NO WAY she was getting pet rats any time soon. :)



Here is a picture of Hailey just minutes after she got home, opened the door and found a huge new cage with two baby rats in it.


Sneakers and Skittles - twin rat babies!






I'm not sure which rat this is....we can tell them apart only by their tails, so far. Sneakers has a spotted tail.

On the right are Hailey and Owen (aged 7) with the new cage just after they got home from school on her birthday. Owen had found the cage in the garage the day before so was very proud to have been "in on" the secret and managed to keep it from Hailey.

It's possible I got a little carried away when cage shopping. :)

Rats are very intelligent and need lots of room - this is a ferret cage. I modified the lower level so that the rats can't get out between the bars while they are babies. When they are bigger, I'll open up the passageway to the upper level and the rats will have a whole emporium at their disposal!

Visiting Tikal - Mayan Ruins in Guatemala

While on our trip to Belize, Kevin and I took a 2 day trip over to Guatemala to visit Tikal.

It was truly amazing, seeing the ancient ruins. Our guide explained that only about 20% of the ruins are now visible, after having been dug out from under the jungle that had grown over it.

If you looked for it, in places you could see in the jungle floor, areas with rows of parallel horizontal lines, indicated staircases that were still covered.

We climbed enormous structures - they were incredibly high, with very narrow, very steep steps.

I had never been aware of having a fear of heights before. However....

We had arranged to view the sunset from the top of one of the monuments. A guide brought us there. As we had been running slightly behind schedule, we climbed the monument extremely quickly.

Only once I was finally up at the top did I look down and realize I was completely terrified!

I am not sure that I have ever felt so frozen in fear before. Kevin suggested that I move to the flat surface, away from the edge, rather than on the top step, but I was completely unable to move. Now I know why they say "don't look down".

I did manage to get some photos of the sunset - and of the steps we had climbed up.

I can say that focusing upon my Zensight healing symbol - as well as Kevin's support - was essential in dissolving enough fear that I was able to come down again, without throwing up or passing out.

Beautiful, Sunny Belize!

My husband Kevin and I visited Placencia - a peninsula of Belize - from February 6th - 16th (very strategically missing huge snowfalls and extremely cold temperatures, in our absence :-)).

I highly recommend a trip to Belize - it was absolutely beautiful. What is particularly nice about Belize at this point is that tourism is only newly being developed.

This has its pros and cons - our trip to Belize involved 3 planes including one very small plane (seated 10 people) and a boat, each way! However the week after we returned Air Canada started direct flights from Toronto to Placencia so it would now be one plane trip, if we were to take the same trip again.

On the upside, most days when we were at the beach we had it virtually to ourselves. The most people we ever saw on the beach with us at the same time, were maybe 3-4 other people. It was really quite private.

Wildlife we saw included howler monkeys, spider monkeys, crocodiles, manatees, iguanas, geckos, toucans, green parrots, and a wide variety of other birds.
While snorkeling we also saw giant lobsters, huge barracudas, many varieties of tropical fish, live sand dollars (watch for trails in the sand - at the end of the trail there is a disk like shape that is a sand dollar...), starfish, and stingrays.