So, Archie is an 8-month-old, neutered, pink-eyed, blonde, nervous, very small (female sized) male rat. He nips. He won't stop nipping. I've tried eeking. I've tried touching his nose and saying, "no!". I've tried giving him time-outs. I've tried giving him hours of time running around on my shoulders, and handfulls of treats. I've taken him to the vets and had his mouth examined. And yet. He nips.
He doesn't break the skin, but he does like to go for particularly soft patches, like my inner thighs where my jeans have rubbed through, or, even better, my nipples. It's hard to keep your composure and calmly discipline an animal when it's just chomped down on your ****. I wear my rat-armour of a thick wool jumper, but he's not above some furious burrowing in order to find a good patch of flesh.
It's not just me. My other two rats, Roland (his brother, hooded, black eyes) and Kiki (two-year-old female, hooded, black eyes) are absolute softy sweethearts. But Archie sometimes repeatedly nips them so vigerously that they turn on him, and he ends up with real (but not serious) bites on his flanks. No matter what anybody does, Archie just doesn't understand what he's doing wrong!
The nipping is getting to me so much that I'd take Archie to a rat sanctuary and trade him in if the three of them didn't usually get on so well. I really would. I'd box him up, go to Bristol, and say "I cannot handle this rat. Please swap him for another, maybe a really old one with no teeth."
What can I do about the nipping? Learn to enjoy pain? Get tattoos and piercings? Invest in chain mail? Only handle Archie drunk? Both get high on LSD and really connect on a spiritual level? Make a cone of paper, cut the tip off, coat the inside with honey and let him get his face stuck in it?
I feel like a completely inept rat owner, but I have tried everything and I am at my wit's end!
He doesn't break the skin, but he does like to go for particularly soft patches, like my inner thighs where my jeans have rubbed through, or, even better, my nipples. It's hard to keep your composure and calmly discipline an animal when it's just chomped down on your ****. I wear my rat-armour of a thick wool jumper, but he's not above some furious burrowing in order to find a good patch of flesh.
It's not just me. My other two rats, Roland (his brother, hooded, black eyes) and Kiki (two-year-old female, hooded, black eyes) are absolute softy sweethearts. But Archie sometimes repeatedly nips them so vigerously that they turn on him, and he ends up with real (but not serious) bites on his flanks. No matter what anybody does, Archie just doesn't understand what he's doing wrong!
The nipping is getting to me so much that I'd take Archie to a rat sanctuary and trade him in if the three of them didn't usually get on so well. I really would. I'd box him up, go to Bristol, and say "I cannot handle this rat. Please swap him for another, maybe a really old one with no teeth."
What can I do about the nipping? Learn to enjoy pain? Get tattoos and piercings? Invest in chain mail? Only handle Archie drunk? Both get high on LSD and really connect on a spiritual level? Make a cone of paper, cut the tip off, coat the inside with honey and let him get his face stuck in it?
I feel like a completely inept rat owner, but I have tried everything and I am at my wit's end!
