Nau speak: Happy February's & brand new babies

Hey guys, been a minute!

Needless to say, January got away from me.

Between working on a book cover, volunteering with Critical Care Comics, adopting two new rats then losing our beloved fat rat Pendleton, working on trying to resolve the situation with my grandmother, car troubles and the rest I didn't find much time to work on the blog. For that I apologise.

Yes, we adopted two new rats last month.

The little baldy above is Deadpool, a female double-rex. While she's mostly hairless, she has little bits of soft curly peach fuzz on her face and legs so she's not a true hairless rat- to her benefit. True hairless rats were bred in laboratories for their utility in science and tend to have compromised immune systems and many health issues throughout life as a result. Double rex rats, like our little wrinkle-belly above, are much more resilient.

And our little Deadpool is pretty robust, just like her namesake! Just yesterday she gave birth to a litter of 9! 9 is actually pretty small by rat standards, but that's plenty of little guys for us. Pendleton was the proud papa but he didn't get to meet his progeny. :( May he rest in Rathalla. I'm glad that his legacy lives on and I'm really excited to see how their coats develop. They're not really the cutest of things right now to non-rat lovers, but one thing that's fun to note is that you can see the little light spots full of milk in their bellies in the photo above.

Then we've got Lt. Ripley, an odd-eyed (one eye is red) fluff ball. She's an absolute sweetheart and cuddle bug, recently having developed the particular propensity for sticking her tongue up our noses and trying to groom us. It's a sign of affection that shows she considers us part of her family and cares about our tidiness and wellbeing, but it's kinda gross when she pulls away with a booger and starts chomping away. x_x;; and her tiny little tongue is quite probe-y...but love is love, right? And pet rats are exceptionally clean animals, probably cleaner than us, so it's no wonder she'd want to groom us... ^^; she's just trying to hold us up to her standards of grooming, which mean cleaning your face every 5 minutes or so, lol.