During the night, we lost ANNIE. ANNIE had been dumped on me when I was still with another rescue; Mary Wellock (someone who surrendered rats so frequently to us that I recognized her number on the incoming caller id on the rescue hotline number) called me to insist we take yet another rat: She is destroying my room! We met her to get what turned out to be ANNIE, a tiny, 4-5 month old female b/w hooded dumbo, who was mentally slow, blind in one eye, and with the tip of her tail degloved. It was hard finding a cagemate for ANNIE; any rat we put in tried to attack and kill her, while she just sat there, not defending herself, looking confused. We finally tried an 8 week old baby, who also tried at first to attack her, but eventually NUGGET became her buddy and caretaker. ANNIE was the only rat NUGGET had ever known, and now she is alone.( NUGGET had been rescued as a tiny baby from being snake food and had actually spent a night in with the snake.) ANNIEs tail healed, her eye always changed colors for some reason; our vet said she was blind in that eye, most likely. For the last few weeks I was hand-feeding ANNIE Ensure because she did not seem to want to eat hard food. I began nebulizing her the last few days because she was having breathing issues. I last nebulized her around midnight last night, then put her into the hospital cage which stayed in bed with me. I found her body cold around 8 AM this morning. Early this morning, a friend of our rescues emailed me pictures of a 4 week old baby b/w hooded dumbo she rescued the other day from a pet store that was selling him for 99 cents, as snake food. I am amazed at how much he resembles ANNIE, and since she is bringing him to us, I guess you all know where hes staying! In 2013, between my own personal rats and the sanctuary/hospice rats, we have lost 12. When I decided to create a sanctuary/hospice add-on to Philly Rat Rescue, it was with the knowledge that I would end up experiencing a lot more suffering and death than if we just ran a regular rescue. But its OK, because what consoles me is knowing these rats died in peace, safety, comfort, and with a lot of love. Thats really all that matters. And thats what enables me to handle it. So no tears for me, or for any of us....our solace comes in knowing we rescued these rats from a horrible fate and uncertain future, and enabled them to live out the rest of their short lives in peace, safety and with much love.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 15:25:24 +0000
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