Terrified Rat, Cleaning cages, Prairie dogs, and More

So, today was one of those days where there was a million things to do, and a few things did get done, not as much as I'd wished, but oh well.

First, I had someone coming by for a cage and some supplies, as well as a guinea pig nail trims (er, four gp nail trims).  So, she came by, wanted to know how the court case was going, and I told her how I need to look up some other rescues that have the same policy about returning the animal without refund, and we started talking about how he wanted the money back for everything.  She though that was insane, and I told her how I 'd offered to pay him half price for all the stuff he'd bought, because that's all I can typically sell used stuff for, and she was saying how my prices for used stuff is totally reasonable, and I had tried to tell him that that's why I couldn't give him full price back for everything, because I can't sell used items for full price.  Ah well.

Moving on, she eventually left and I listed some more items on the webstore.  Moved onto my table-o-doom and starting to put thing away.  I took all of the hay cube holders that I ordered from Shoots ad put those on all of the runs and the FNs.  Repackaged some of the stuff on the table so I could move some of it off.

Cleaned most of the guinea pig cages and two of the rat cages.  Decided that today was a good day to see if the new prairie dog would get along with Shiloh.  So, she went in his cage.  Wide-mouthed with teeth out, and chirping, but not attacking.  Shiloh, being the gentleman he is, was just sniffing her and kissing her (a greeting sign) but being very relaxed.  With Shiloh's cage being as big as it is, the two could completely ignore each other but still be in the same cage, so I remained downstairs to listen for any signs of issue while they got to know each other.

Came back later to find this:

I made noise to get her attention so she'd raise her head so you could see her better...

So, that's clearly going well.

So, moving along, I needed to swap out Nytro and Squishy, so that Ace can have his run.  Well, the problem is that Puff likes Nytro, but that's not to say she likes most chins.  In fact, she doesn't get along with most chins.  So, I pulled Puff out of the holding cage with Nytro, got a collar on her (much to her dismay), and got her in one of the run holes.  Now, once I see Squishy in with Puff and her not maiming him, then I can move those two back to the holding cage, and put Ace in as the male for the last run.  That'll probably take a bit.  Because of Puff's not-so-friendly nature, I had to intro the two of them in a run, so Squishy can get away if needed,

Shimmy and her mosaic baby were moved to one of the holding cages (a free-standing holding cage), so I could have better access to the baby, which has now lost a few grams.  :(  It gets another day or two before I step in, so we shall see how that goes.  The point of moving them was so that there would still be an open run for Squishy to get into if he needed to get away from the females.

Oh and yesterday, I ordered all the necessary herbs for the supplement, as well as ordering 25 more loofahs, and ordering 25 more pounds of rosehips, and some other herbs that we carry.  So, those will be on their way.  Wrote up the little blurbs about the supplement and about the herb sampler (which will contain some of each of our available herbs - but not including the herbs that are only in the supplement).  I wanted to put together the herb sampler, but the other things that needed to be done during the day prevented that and left that for another day.

Moving on, I cleaned several of the rat cages until I got to the cage of terrified rat.  Now, terrified rat has been the subject of discussion for awhile, and the latest advice from my rat guru was that I should try holding the rat for 20 minutes, which would exhaust its fear response, and possibly turn the rat around.  Well... that didn't work out so well.  Ended up contacting my rat guru and then Beth at Critter Camp about that.  Will blog about that in a separate post so this one doesn't get excessively long.

So, there was that one guy who was on my waiting list, who then got a chin elsewhere, and now had emailed me a bit ago about bringing the chin here.  Due to receiving information that some of the emails I had sent never made it to their destination, after I didn't hear back from this guy for several days, I decided to call him to check if he had gotten my email.  He called back today, saying that he had totaled his car and wouldn't be bringing the chin by for at least another week or two.  I told him that was fine, and there was no rush, I just wanted to make sure he had gotten the email, which he had.  So he said he'd contact me when he was able to come by. 

Short of the rat stuff, which I will blog about separate, I think that was it for today.