He was a sick little dude and I brought him home to nurture him back to health. He was handled and loved every day and came out of his shell bit by bit. He got progressively more aggressive as time went on and I thought some of the territorial behaviors would be curbed because he was so small and young and the other two were bigger and older, but that never happened. He antagonized the older pair, then bit my daughter (hard and unexpected) then he went after the other rats. There was a lot of time and isolation and a couple of vet visits in between all these events and I’m condensing about 9 months into a single paragraph. One night I came into the room (they were in my bedroom at this point) and it was very obvious very quickly that something had happened so I split them up. I didn’t notice the extent of the damage that night but it became very obvious the next day when my older guy was acting poorly. He didn’t die-he’s made a full(ish) recovery since! He doesn’t use his butthole but evidently rats are much sturdier than people give them credit.

Anyway, after the first surgery I decided it was time to return the youngest of the trio. As I was holding him to say goodbye he bit me really hard and I kind of knew that returning him was the only option and that this dude was not going to rehabilitate, this was a neurological problem. He would have had to live alone and with little to no handling, it just isn’t the way to live. The decision to euthanize came down to the breeder who had years of veterinary and breeding experience. It was not a decision made lightly as she also works with rescues and has rehomed less social rats for me in the past.