A Rat’s Tale (and Tail)
August 23rd, 2008
The Thomas household experienced a rather scary event a few days ago – our “The Choco-rat” had a little accident involving a mean shredder and the tip of her tail.
We recently started letting our two rats run around the house as they pleased. They are very well behaved and well trained – no random pooping or nibbling on cords (okay, maybe the occasional nibble), so we do not necessarily watch them as they run around. On this particular day, we suddenly heard the shredder run, and my initial thought was “Why is it running?”. Since our shredder has an auto-off for skin (i.e. you can put your hand on it and the shredder will stop), I did not think our little “tussen” was in any serious danger. Sadly, the “skin” rule does not apply to rat tails, as we found out. :(
Our little Choco was there with a bleeding tip of her tail. We were surprised that she wasn’t squeaking in pain or running around like mad. She seemed to be handling the situation very bravely. We eventually caught her (after she had trekked blood all over our carpet) and cuddled her while trying to get the bleeding to stop. After a few minutes, she was calm enough to put in a clean box to rest and recover, and I went to Google some information on how to help a poor rat who has lost part of its tail. My experience resulted in a rollercoaster of emotions because of both the good and bad information out there, and that is why I am writing this post.
Note: I am not an expert on rats, but what follows below is based on my experience with this and what I read online.
What you will find when you Google “rat tail cut off”
Generally, results will fall in to the “answers” category. Read all these with a grain of salt as the people assume you purposely hurt your rat (what the heck? I just want to help my rat who had an accident!). You will probably be anxious for your rat as it is, so try to filter through results to find the more factual answers and ignore the rants on how terrible the person who asked the question is. It’s okay – rats have accidents. Apparently, losing part of a tail can be quite common, so take a deep breath and try to stay calm. Your rat will probably be more calm than you!
What to do if your rat’s tail gets cut off
First of all, there is a technical term for a rat losing part of its tail – degloving. Actually, it’s a technical term to describe a type of injury where skin is completely torn off. Not cool, so here’s what you can do:
The best article I read can be found here.
- Stop the bleeding
- Some suggest using clean, print-free paper towels to try to stop the bleeding. This would be great if you can get your rat to hold still for long enough to put pressure on the tail. Our rat did this, and the bleeding stopped in about 5-8 minutes.
- Others have suggested putting liquid band aid.
- Some also suggest using flour.
- Clean the area if you can – some suggest using a saline solution.
- If you rat was just purely degloved, then you will see a white bone-like looking thing sticking out. This is their tail sinew. Don’t try to cut if off!
- Apply a topical antibiotic ointment if you can (we used Neosporin, and it helped the bleeding stop, too)
- I would be cautious about this.
- Some people recommend giving the rat something to help with the pain while others say take the rat to the vet Immediately.
- I would say this choice is up to you. We gave our Choco about a 10th of a regular Ibuprofen pill mixed with peanut butter, and that made her very calm and happy.
- We put Choco in a clean cardboard box with an old, clean shirt to lay on and some water and food. We taped a cover over the box (with air holes, of course), so she would be forced to stay in there and rest, which she did.
- In about 6 hours, she decided she was well enough to get out. The smart little thing dumped her water out onto a corner of the box to dampen it, pushed through, and escaped into our bedroom where she climbed up in bed with me and woke me up at 1:00 in the morning. :) Somehow, she got passed my husband who was working in the living room where her box was. Sneaky little rat!
And that’s about it as far as steps you can really take, aside from taking your rat to a vet. A word on vets, though – from what I read, not very many vets specialize in small animals. It doesn’t sound worth it to take your sick rat to a regular vet as they may not even know what to do. You’ll have to do some research to find a vet in your area that can handle rats.
It has been about two weeks now, and our “The Choco-Rat” is doing great. The end of her tail has clotted and is starting to heal up over the sinew. Unfortunately, rat tails do not grow back, so she’ll have that little stubby end of a tail for the rest of her life. So far, she doesn’t seem to mind it.
I hope you never have to experience having your poor rat suffer degloving from anything (cage, too much pulling – yes, that can happen, shredders), but if you specifically looked up this post, then I want you to know that I feel your pain and hope your little baby gets better quickly.
From a relatively new rat lover,
CT
Additional Resources:
- Answers at Yahoo.com
- “Pet Rats” – Tail at AllExperts.com
- Rat Tail Degloving at AllExperts.com
- You can always Google “rat tail cut” or “rat tail injury”
Hi.
Really enjoyed your blog about your rat’s accident. Not that I enjoyed that your rat had an accident but that it ended well. As you will notice my nickname has rat as a part of it and I’ve been looking for an image of a rat to use as an avatar. Might I have permission to use one or more of your pics for that purpose. I can promise I will do nothing that would cast aspersions on Choco’s fine name. If you would grant me permission please let me know by email. Thanks.
Ps. I liked the part of your blog about Pride & Prejudice and Zombies. I would buy the book from your review if I hadn’t already purchased it. I also preferred the 1st sabertooth to the one in origins. Thanks again.
MIke aka paqrat
How did choco survive? Our baby rattie had a degloving accident today. I’m just wondering about her chances of survival. We are keeping her clean, but she seems to be hurting. We gave her about two drops of infant motrin.
Our rat is Tilly.
Thanks for any other info you have.
Thank you,
Vicki
Hi. This really is kind of an “unconventional” question , but have other site visitors asked you how have the menu bar to look such as you have it? I also have a weblog and am really trying to change around the design, however I’m terrified to death to wreck havoc on it for concern of search engines like google punishing me. I’m extremely not used to all of this …so i am simply not optimistic the best way to try to to it all yet. I’ll just keep working on it one day at a time Thanks for any help you can offer here
Howdy, Are you going to be making a follow-up post? The hubby and myself have passed some time exploring over your web site and surprisingly enough you discussed a little something we were talking about only the other month with our daughter. We very often notice ourselves arguing on the littlest of points, isn’t it ridiculous?