Rats Lovers in a Panera Bread

Sunday afternoon, Ricky and I adventured into Baltimore for our first Baltimore Rat Meetup monthly meeting. After the initial awkardness of walking up to complete strangers and asking "Is this is rat meeting?", we settled down with four other people for a three hour discussion of anything (and everything) rat.

Danielle, the meetup organizer and her friend Julie brought books by Debbie Ducommun, also known as the "Rat Lady," including Rats and The Complete Guide to Rat Training (both of which we already owned), along with some adorable snuggle scarves for sale which, not possessing one, we immediately snatched up. Much of the initial talk focused on the World of Pets Expo held a few weekends ago, and introducing all of our ratties. I brought my video camera and played some clips I had taken the previous evening. Along with talking about the rats themselves - not being there themselves we had to provide a personality overview - we discussed breeders, rescues, and rattie tips.

As I could spend all day recapping the lengthy conversations, here are a few highlights:

- Discussing favorite type of rats (dumbo, standard, hooded, etc.)
- Pros and Cons of female and male rats, and male genitalia (Ricky and I seemed the only ones squeamish about their gigantic balls. They're huge. Ew.)
- Vet Care
- The life and death of each individual rat

Needless to say, Ricky and I left ridiculously excited about the next meeting and very much wanting to go play with the girls.

We also realized that compared to some rat owners, we are very, very normal. When discussing genetics with my fellow rat lovers in the library, I receive plenty of weird looks from my friends. When someone is discussing the aesthetic appeal of intact male rats, I'm the one who is (slightly) weirded out.

Weird topics and all, I cannot emphasize how much ridiculous and nerdy fun we had. You probably could've let me loose at the Faerie Festival and I would't have had as much fun. And now that the extent of my dorkiness is revealed, here's some info about the meetup:

The Baltimore Rat Meetup has been running for a while, but will shortly be shutting down its meetup page simply because of the costs. If you are interested in joining, let someone know on the webpage so you can get on the email list for future meetings, or just ask me for the email.

In other news:
Still waiting on baby Panya's coloring. Her name means "mouse" in Egyptian, which I find awesome. So far she looks like an adorable ruby-eyed siamese rex.
No more news on BHR Justin and Taylor's litter. Will post as soon as I know.

Happy nice weather!