Oreo and Frisbee

Summer camp is around the corner!

Jeff and I have begun working on a project for wildlife camp - training 2 rats. I named mine Oreo and Jeff's is named Frisbee. The bad part is we can't tell them apart except for tail so we are currently calling them clear-tail and dirty-tail.

Wildlife camp is a taste of different things animal related. For example, we are going to the zoo, aquarium, an animal hospital, having kids help out with barn chores AND hopefully run a training session with the rats. Wouldn't it be cool to have the kids be able to give a cue and have the rats do the behaviour? Jeff ideas were that one would run through a cardboard tube and the other would ring a bell. We have started the training process by not handling the rats. Just letting them explore on their own and hopefully they will eventually be willing to climb into our hands.

clear-tail is on the left and dirty-tail has her back to the camera

Clear-tail coming to investigate the camera

After having the rats for a week, the progress is a little disappointing. We got 2 female rats because we heard that they were easier to train. So far, clear-tail comes out to explore a bit and dirty-tail buries herself in the corner. I guess we will see how far we get before camp!