58 replies to this topic

[Helltown]

I bought a 'Pet Rat' gummi candy today while at Border's which is of course a reminder never to go shopping while hungry, but inside the package was a list of 'Fun Facts' about rats:

A Rat can last longer without water than a camel

Even very large rats can fit through very tiny spaces. How tiny? Well let's put it this way - if you have a hole about the size of a nickel in your wall, you could one day see a rat squeezing through it. Rats don't have bones. They're made up of cartilage, which is flexible.

Rats can hold their breath for three minutes and can tread water for three days.

Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants.

-- The candy tray from a Jelly Belly Pet Rat (vaguely cherry flavored)

This information to a grown up who thinks rats, while they make great pets for some, are vermin is not 'fun', it's actually kinda creepy. Almost made me not want to eat the candy... almost (it was very yummy).

[Sazabi Reverse]

Believe it or not, I actually almost bought one of those just because they had it on the harry potter display. Thankfully, I didn't or else it would be me sharing about rats instead of you.

[fieldarchy]

I actually find those fun facts kinda interesting. Dunno, call me crazy but I think rats are cute little animals. Basically if I had a choice between a rat and a scorpion, I'd take the rat. Out here in the lovely desert our vermin include scorpions, tarantulas and rattlesnakes! Yes, I'll take a rat in the house over one of those guys any day.

Have you tried the every flavor beans yet? Reaper Ron was daring everyone to eat vomit at RCon. I ate one, pretty much tasted like I had just vomited. The dirt was a little off, a little too sweet for dirt, but otherwise tasted like clay with some loam in it. The grass was pretty accurate too. :-)

[eastman]

I'm not sure where they got their "facts" from, but even Wikipedia doesn't have their rat-facts that wrong.

Rats have bones. They got that one wrong. Not sure about the others.

[Helltown]

Not many of my customers will eat jelly beans anymore because of the few days that I left a bowl of nothing but the 'gross' flavored beans on the counter, all the while eating a handful of regular flavored beans from my own personal stash. Daring people, that spoils the surprise! I've tried all the flavors but sausage, my last box didn't have any in it. My favorites of the gross flavors? Pickle, Grass, and Bacon. My least favorite had to be the earwax ones because it tasted like eating a crayon.

So basically my customers know two truths, don't eat any jelly beans in unmarked containers and always ask who baked the pies (my business partner thinks that hot sauce is an ingredient in everything including desserts). I'm betting I could get away with the candy bowl again soon, the hot sauce pies are fresh in the memories, the evil jelly beans are not. I'll have to start saving 'em again.

[PurityThruFire]

I've owned a few Rats in my days.
I think they make cool little pets.
Lots of personality for little creatures.
However, no more room in the house anymore.
I currently have 1 dog (Pug named Takashi, pictured in my avatar), 1 dwarf Hamster (Fizzgig), 3 African Clawed Frogs (Biscuit, Mina and Al) and 2 Plecos(Pete and Dr. Dorian).

[M. Eversberg II]

Dunno, call me crazy but I think rats are cute little animals. Basically if I had a choice between a rat and a scorpion, I'd take the rat.

You're crazy! I had a pet scorpion last year, until it somehow escaped (or was let loose) and ended up being injured and dying. They're cool pets.

M.

[Aryanun]

Scorpions only hurt when they sting, they don't:

• Eat food and contaminate it with urine and excrement.
• Gnaw into materials such as paper, books, wood or upholstery which they use as nest material. They also gnaw plastic, cinder blocks, soft metals such as lead and aluminum, and wiring which may cause a fire hazard (imagine all your computer cords, and minis, being gnawed on or chewed through).
• Bite people and may kill small animals. They have also been known to be found gnawing on babies in their cribs.
• They, or the parasites they carry, (such as fleas, mites and worms) spread many diseases such as Bubonic Plague, Murine Typhus, Rickettsial pox, Salmonellosis (acute food poisoning), Rat Bite Fever - is caused by a bacterium which can live in the saliva of both rats and mice. It has flu like symptoms that can last for days and is sometimes fatal, Leptospirosis, Lymphocytic choriomeningitis, trichinosis, typhoid, dysentery as well as others.
• Can damage ornamental plants by burrowing among the roots, or feeding on new growth or twigs. They also eat some garden vegetables, such as corn and squash.

Scorpions also eat other insects, thus keeping the insect population in your house down, instead of your own food.

Give me the scorpion any day of the week.

[Qwyksilver]

Rats are pretty cool if you buy them from a Biology supply company or a reputable pet dealer. Wild rats, yeah, not so nice. They can survive just about anything and are really hard to kill.

I managed about 80 cages of rats and about as part of my work study for the biology/psych department. My primary job was to get them accustomed to human touch so the precious senior thesis students wouldn't get bitten.

Rats have bones, but they do have a lot of cartilage. They can fit through any hole their head can fit through. And honestly, if they couldn't, they could chew the hole bigger in almost no time.

Some things I learned while being a rat wrangler:

1. You can actually pick a rat up by its tail, in fact, it's the proper way to do it. Their tail is bone and muscle, unlike dogs and cats which is primarily cartilage. Picking up a rat by it's tail means it won't bite you.

2. Male rats are filthy and disgusting little poop and pee factories when you compare them to females. I'd have to clean male cages 2-3 times per week. Females, once. You can tell a male and a female rat apart fairly easily, just by the cage. You can also tell by other obvious means too if you don't have a cage.

3. Baby rats are called pups, and when first born, look like pink and grey jelly beans.

4. If you have to clean a cage with a mother rat and her pups, ALWAYS remove the mother first. Go ahead, I dare you to touch a pup if she's still in the cage.

5. Be careful if you are messing with a rat you find in the wild. It may have a sword and an underground city. Not all the rats hanging with Mrs. Frisby were killed.

Edited by Qwyksilver, 15 July 2007 - 07:43 AM.

[Qwyksilver]

Give me the scorpion any day of the week.

Looks like someone liked the way you think. On the news this morning, there is apparently a jewelry shop in Michigan that places large scorpions in the display cases of their more expensive jewelry as a deterrant to thieves.

Of course, I always thought the larger the scorpion, typically the less potent the venom, and the nastier their claws. So I guess this is more a psy ops than anything.

Here's a link to the local news report

[Star Drifter]

I've tried the every flavor jelly beans and had fun eating most of them. Yeah, the gross ones were really gross. That was part of the fun though!

The jelly slugs are just kind of lame. Even some fun facts would have helped.

I'll try to get a Jelly Slug next week, if we go by Border's.

[PurityThruFire]

Give me the scorpion any day of the week.

Looks like someone liked the way you think. On the news this morning, there is apparently a jewelry shop in Michigan that places large scorpions in the display cases of their more expensive jewelry as a deterrant to thieves.

Of course, I always thought the larger the scorpion, typically the less potent the venom, and the nastier their claws. So I guess this is more a psy ops than anything.

Here's a link to the local news report

That's awesome!
That's how I shall protect my minis from now on.
You know...um...from all the people who want to rob me...yeah...that's it...

[kristof65]

The dirt was a little off, a little too sweet for dirt, but otherwise tasted like clay with some loam in it. The grass was pretty accurate too. :-)

Umm, Meg? Do we even want to know how you know what clay, loam and grass taste like in the first place?

[M. Eversberg II]

I wasn't going to say anything.

M.

[Helltown]

Erm... Maybe Meg knows what dirt tastes like for the same reason I know what dirt and grass taste like... I played soccer and was prone to making those spectacular diving catches when playing softball, which means occasionally I ate ended up tasting the turf. Oh and nothing beats a slide tackle through a gargantuan mud puddle, dirt and grass ingestion is inevitable with that one.