Showing posts with label rats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rats. Show all posts

Thursday, July 8, 2010

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!