The little rat that could

As mentioned before, we have a little house guest- NoDoze the rat. She doesn’t live in the best of circumstances because the only place we can keep her is in a small cage at the far end of the kitchen counter.



Since her cage is small, we have to give her other opportunities to get some exercise. One way she gets exercise is by spending time rolling around the house in a large plastic exercise ball. Sometimes she'll explore and other times she will follow us around. She loves company and attention. Twice now, she has surprised us during exercise time.

The first time was a few weeks ago when she had been rolling around for a while and it was time to put her away. I went looking for her and this is what I found:

Exercise ball open, no rat in sight!

Fortunately, as I turned around to look for her, she poked her nose around a corner and waited for me to pick her up.

Saturday, she was having exercise time again while O and I were working in the garage. She has a hard time getting the ball to go over ridges and bumps so we don’t worry about her getting over the thresholds and out the doors. We had the door to the garage open because we were going in and out a lot. Suddenly we heard a clatter at the bottom of the garage steps. Somehow she got her exercise ball over the (rather tall) threshold and must have overshot the steps because she landed at the bottom of the steps without rolling down them. She didn’t seem worse for the wear. All we can figure is that she must have had the smarts to know she needed a running start. Too smart for her own good, I guess.