r/Rodentlovers

I found this little mouse while walking my dog, and I went back later to bring it some water and a bit of cheese (I know they’re not really supposed to have that).
When I watched it for a bit, I noticed it was a little unsteady on its feet, so I grabbed the transport box from my old hamster and gave it some hamster food, a bit of water, and some shredded paper towels.
Tomorrow, I’m planning to release it in a safe environment (there are a lot of cats around here).
How would you go about this, and would you even have helped it at all? 😅

Hey everyone! My dad has watched a squirrel climb across our hanging lights and steal a bulb several times now. Chews through the wires and then takes the whole darn thing back with him, anyone know why they would do this or how to prevent it?

Ps. Those bulbs in the back are the last on this string and it spans the whole yard.

Hi everyone!! So I am a first time rat owner, my cousin honestly just dumped her rats onto me— she bought them as feeders for her snake and couldn’t bring herself to to feed them, and since I’ve owned rodents before she basically figured I would be the best. I’ve owned two male mice, a hamster, and fostered/given comfort care to a few mice now and then so I believe I have experience for the most part. What they have now is probably 3 months of building onto, they have their own food mix of seeds/grains, adult rat pellets, proteins ( I can’t remember the bug at the moment), and others. I keep buying them more stuff and I plan on adding a container at the bottom for dirt as a different substrate. I take them out for 1-2 hours I want to say 3-4 times a week, I work two jobs and I’m also a full time college student so they’re a little low on my priority list but still obviously completely taken care of. Their substrate is paper which I know isn’t the best so I plan on switching to wood shavings(?) sometime soon when it comes into my budget! My biggest thing is just asking for any opinions on their cage setup, what I could add/take away, and any cheap alternatives!

I also completely forgot to add— their cage was a ferret cage, my cousin gave it to me and obviously they could get out so I covered it with chicken wiring! That’s why it looks a little funky but it does the job! I also want to say cage dimensions are like.. 2 feet by 5 feet by 5 feet? I added the Funko pop for some size comparison😭

The rats are also Selene (white) and Nyx (black/white) they’re both girls!

https://blonderoofrat.com/open-research-questions/

https://blonderoofrat.com/bibliography/

I have been breeding Roof Rats (Rattus rattus) for tameness for >8 years. Not much is known about this species compared to closely related Norway rats (so-called "lab rats"), and I'd often observe things about them the directly contradicted published research and "common knowledge" about "rats".

I've accumulated my notes and musings about these and other "squirrels" about health, nutrition etc., really all over the place. It was a big disorganized mess. Some of it was junk and easily debunked, but some of it might actually be interesting. And some of those questions could only easily be answered by studying actual Roof rats, not just lab rats, so it was worth pointing that out.

I was already using Claude to create a website about Roof Rats, and it seemed to be good at reading and organizing information, so I used it extract every unique open research question it could find in all of my writings about Roof Rats, including any citations in case I mentioned any, then research every single one of those questions and see what it could discover about them.

Rattus norvegicus and Mus musculus are both well researched species, and a lot of my questions were already answered for them, so often the question would be "Is it possible that Rattus rattus might be different from those two? If so, why and what would that mean?" If I already knew, or strongly suspected, that Rattus rattus were different, also include that observation unless it was already widely known and there was no research angle. Hypothesis and speculation should be identified as such. Questions needed to be testable and disprovable (and suggest ways to do that.)

Because I knew that my list would be changing and growing, I stored research questions, citations, glossary definitions and FAQ entries in an actual structured database rather than just text. That's already proven it's worth, as I can easily reorganize, cross reference, deep link to and reuse these conceptual "objects" throughout the website. Research questions reference citations, and can give rise to FAQ entries and Glossary terms.

The website was intended to share information, so it is all discoverable and searchable. If you hover over something, a clickable "#" deep link will appear which will copy a shareable, permanent URL directly to that thing: https://blonderoofrat.com/open-research-questions/#hyp-behavioral-social-structure

We bought a mouse yesterday and once we were home realised she has a bald spot on her back and it’s a little bit flaky. She is a lot slower, doesn’t explore much, smaller (unsure if she is just the runt or not as she isn’t extremely skinny just little), she is eating but more just sits in one spot with squinted eyes.
Any ideas?
I’m worried if she is sick she will make the other mice sick too?
Pet shop opens tomorrow, should I go back with her and talk to them?

Thanks!! ☺️

Any product that can bend to cover this part of the wall? Is roof flashing the best one? If so how thick should it be?

https://blonderoofrat.com/what-to-feed-roof-rats/

I have done a TON of research, and created a resource for roof rat owners that can also be used for Norway rat owners, too (the nutritional requirements are very similar.)

My goal was to add back what you pet is missing if it just eats ultra-processed pellets instead of foraging for whole, natural food foods like they were meant to do. I am not selling anything: it's all public domain, with links to the actual science and research that you can verify yourself! There's even a worksheet where you can select from a list of different ingredients, and it create a personalized menu and shopping list with prices that you can print, bookmark and share with others.

Please feel free to share this page with all of your pet owning friends!

So me and my bf were watching a movie in the mall theater and when we came out and started leaving I saw a baby mouse running around and being an autistic goober I wanted to keep it so 5 minutes later I had a baby mouse. Unfortunately he had to be let go free but only after I got a picture with him.