Debbie Ducommun has rats. You might think that is a bad thing. Ducommun thinks otherwise. They are her pets. You have dogs; she has rats.
She thinks rats make excellent pets-smart, friendly and quiet, aside from the occasional squeak. ”They really are nice little guys,” said Ducommun, the laboratory rat caretaker for the psychology department at California State University in Chico.
She knows, of course, that many other people think rats only make excellent dead rats.
But for those who have no objections, Ducommun has started the Rat Fan Club, based in her home in Chico.
Pet rats, she emphasized, are not to be confused with the kind of rats you see on Lower Michigan Avenue during construction.
Those are Norway brown rats. Pet rats are also Norway brown rats. But through breeding, she says, they have lost the wariness and aggressive territoriality of wild rats.
Because they are kept in cages and well fed, they are clean and disease-free. And because they are handled by humans from birth, they are friendly.
And they are bred for exotic markings and interesting colors like gold, silver, blue and lilac.
So pet rats really look nothing like sewer rats?
”Only in the general sense. I mean, they are rats,” Ducommun conceded.
”You can`t get away from it.”
But they are also pets that, if they cannot claim the title of man`s best friend, at least rate a mention as his pretty good buddy.
California is prime rat country, to the surprise of those who might assume the honor would go to New York. In addition to Ducommun`s new club, which has 25 members, the state is home to the American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association, based in Riverside.
The association, which has 200 members, has shows every other month in which rats and mice are judged on their condition, cleanliness, markings and coloring. There are categories for spotted rats, Siamese rats, Dalmatian rats, curly-haired rats and hairless rats.
Ducommun`s club is for pet owners rather than breeders, and has no truck with mice.
Rats are far superior pets to mice or hamsters because they are smarter and more social, Ducommun says.
”Rats are personable. They`ll come to the top of their cage and beg to be taken out. If you put them in your hand, they`ll run to the top of your shoulder and nibble your ears.
”When they interact with you, they know that you`re another being,” she said. ”They look at you; you look at them. You get eye contact. They probably think you`re a big strange rat.
”I`ve never gotten that feeling with mice and hamsters.”
”They really are interested in interacting with people,” Ducommun added. ”They`re very curious, and they want to know what you`re doing.”
Some of us, frankly, do not want a rat to know what we are doing.
Despite these charming qualities, rats have a huge hurdle to overcome before they will be perceived widely as pets. Namely, they are rats.
”We have a lot of people who they take a look at them and just totally freak out,” said Steve Maciontek, general manager of Animal Kingdom Pet Center, a North Side pet store.
”People have a misconception of rats,” Maciontek said. ”You mention rats, and they right away think of this huge, cat-like creature with foam coming out of his mouth and huge claws.
”But once you get past your prejudice against them, they`re very nice pets,” he said.
The store sells about 100 rats a month at $4 each. Eighty percent are bought to be fed to reptiles, he said; the rest become pets.
Then there is that little matter of the plague.
Plague is spread to humans by rats or fleas that have have sucked the blood of infected rats. Norway rats were a prime source of the bubonic plague that killed one-third of the population of Europe in the Middle Ages.
Although pet rats are the same species, they are extremely unlikely to be exposed to plague, found mainly among wild rodents in the Southwest and in California.
”It`s possible that a dog could have contact with wild rodents that have infected fleas,” said Dr. Robert Craven, chief of epidemiology at the Centers for Disease Control`s Division of Vector-Borne Viral Diseases in Ft. Collins, Colo., which keeps track of plague in the U.S. ”But that`s a pretty far-fetched scenario.”
The worst thing you can get from a domestic rat, Ducommun says, is ratbite fever, a bacterial infection that can be treated with antibiotics.
Pet rats rarely bite, she says. Lab rats, on the other hand, are not as accustomed to handling and have taken occasional, minor nips out of her arms. ”Their teeth aren`t that big,” she said. ”It`s usually just a tiny little wound.”
Rat aficionados say the public gets a skewed view of rats from movies. Leah Soverns, a member of the American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association, said she finds the Hollywood stereotype of the vicious rat ironic.
”All the rats used in the movies are trained pets,” she said.
Star quality
Samantha Martin, a rat trainer and entrepreneur in Chicago, said rats are ideally suited for media stardom.
”Rats are one of the most intelligent rodents,” she said. ”Mine jump through hoops, climb up ladders, bowl and drive around in a little car.”
Martin, who founded a company called The Rat Co. and Friends, also has developed a rat show for parties called ”Samantha and the Amazin` Acro-Rats” in which her rats perform these tricks while dressed in little blond wigs and sunglasses, or the occasional wedding gown.
And rats make as attractive pets as they do brides, she added.
”They`re the best apartment or house pet,” Martin said. ”They`re like small dogs that don`t bark.” Pet rats usually are less than a foot long, and their weight commonly is around 1 pound.
Even wild rats can be tamed as pets. Maciontek recalls that several years ago, an elderly woman called to ask if his pet store would take a group of sweet 6-week-old hamsters she had raised since their birth.
”She brought them in, and there they were-they were all baby rats,” he said. ”She had found them in her basement, not realizing she had a bunch of little baby city rats. She had named them all.
”She really beat an exit out of the store, I think more out of embarrassment than anything else.”
The store kept them on display until they died.
”They were very intelligent and very street-smart,” he said. ”She had them so human-bonded that they would go to anybody. They were kind of nice.” Rat breeders say, however, that wild rats will always retain some wariness and fear of new situations.
”Wild rats are very nervous and can inflict a bad bite,” said Donna Galins, ”rat representative” of the American Fancy Rat and Mouse
Association. ”We breed for temperament. We do not keep or breed a rat that bites.”
Evolution of a rat lover
Ducommun, 33, acquired her first rat when she was 8-a gift from her mother, who got the rat free from, coincidentally, the same laboratory where Ducommun now works.
Her job is not an easy one for a rat lover. Most of the rats are euthanized after the experiments. In one experiment, some are deprived of water to motivate them to learn to press levers in exchange for drinks from a water bottle.
”I`m an animal rights person. When I took the job, I had to really do some thinking,” she said. ”But I decided if the rats were going to be there, they should have someone who really likes them take care of them.”
She has tried to persuade teachers to stop using rats in experiments, and says it would be worth losing her job if they did so.
She has eased the rats` water deprivation schedule. And at the end of every semester, she tries to persuade students to take rats home so they will not have to be euthanized or used as snake chow. About 10 percent of students do, she says.
The students began calling her with rat care questions. Soon Ducommun found herself becoming an informal rat consultant. She decided to start a rat fan club and newsletter, which in its introductory issue dealt with such issues as ”Playtime: Rat Wrestling” and ”How to Choose a Pet Rat” (”A healthy rat should be curious and active, and feel hefty when you pick him up”).
She has eight rats of her own. She keeps them in aquariums outfitted with exercise wheels and ladders, and takes them out in the evenings to play.
”One of my little hairless females, Cleo, she likes to run up when I`m not looking and nip me on the inside of my arms, where it`s real tender,”
Ducommun reported affectionately.
She used to take one of her rats with her to the bank, perched on her shoulder or tucked inside her blouse.
”Most of the time, people think they`re big mice,” she said.
Pet rats have few needs: essentially, food, water and companionship. They are so social that Ducommun recommends buying at least two.
Ducommun`s rats climb to the edge of their aquariums to beg for treats:
popcorn, dry oatmeal and food scraps. The rats are too nearsighted to jump down, so Ducommun takes them out and lets them run around on her sofa.
”They`ll play with me,” she said. ”They`ll jump up in the air and do this little shake. Then I know they`re in a playful mood. I`ll shake my hand. Then they`ll jump on my hand and wrestle with it. They`re basically treating you like another rat.”
Rats enjoy being petted. ”They like to be rubbed behind the ears like a dog or cat,” Ducommun said. ”Some of them love it so much, they`ll go to sleep; you just rub their little heads and they just sit there and their eyes will close.”
The medical end
This is all very touching. But having pet rats is a responsibility as well as a pleasure. Rats are susceptible to respiratory infections, which they pass easily to each other but do not transmit to humans.
She has spent nearly $150 in the last 18 months on medications and rat throat bacterial swabs at $80 a shot. She has worked out this system for treating sick rats:
She takes one pill, which contains 40 rat-doses of antibiotic, and grinds it into powder. She mixes the powder with peanut butter and flour. She cuts the mixture into 40 squares. She forms the squares into little balls. She rolls the balls in flour so they won`t stick to the rats` throats.
She feeds each sick rat one ball in the morning and one ball at night. She has to feed them individually, out of their cages, so the other rats don`t steal the peanut butter balls.
So she sits on her couch, holding a wheezing rat as he chomps on a peanut butter ball, and giving him sips of water from a bottle.
They show their appreciation by chewing on her couch.
”They`re very oral,” she said. ”You have to supervise them.”
Rats have distinct personalities, Ducommun says. In fact, she is writing a novel, a sort of ”Watership Down” about rats, and basing the characters on her own rats` distinctive personalities.
One fictional rat will be patterned on Sputnik, an unusually small hairless rat who lost the sight in one eye in the water deprivation experiment (Ducommun did not know then that hairless rats are particularly susceptible to dehydration).
He had frequent, severe respiratory infections. ”I cried one night; I was sure I was going to wake up next day and he would be dead,” she recalled. He was extremely uncoordinated, and got water in his nose when he tried to drink out of a water bottle. He also chewed holes in her clothes.
Naturally, Sputnik was one of her favorites. But he could not recover from his most recent respiratory infection. Several weeks ago, Ducommun reluctantly injected him with a lethal combination of anesthesia.
”He needed so much extra care. He was kind of like my baby,” she said.
”I`m going to miss him.”
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The Rat Fan Club can be reached at 1010 1/2 Broadway, Chico, Calif. 95928.
