A Rat for Your Monday Morning

Meet Loki, who’s every bit as much trouble, mayhem and mischief as his name would suggest…

…because sometimes, even the most erudite (and I wouldn’t count myself, there!) need to resort to a cute pet picture on a Monday morning.

Rat Photoshoot, Take 1

Those of you who have flicked through the back entries of this blog may have already seen the first pictures of my rats, Billy and James, that I posted here. Today I decided to take some more pictures of them, for your delectation. They’re difficult critters to take good photos of, particularly in the bad light we were working with (our house seems to be incredibly dark and even a well-positioned lamp didn’t help much) but these are the best of the bunch.

We’ll start off with Billy. They’re both eating little crunchy nuggets, one of their favourite foods, which explains why they’re holding something small and brown.

Billy2

And here’s a slightly clearer picture, this time of James.

James2

After the initial shock of hearing the camera shutter once or twice, these guys certainly aren’t camera shy. The main problem, aside from getting them to sit still, is keeping them far enough away from the lens to actually focus on them! Being rats, they just have to get as close as possible to the action, in this case the camera, to see what’s going on.

So there you have it: Billy and James enjoying a snack. What do you think? Anyone got any tips for taking rat (or rodent in general) photos? I’d love some advice!

Rats: Introductions

In some corners of the internet, Saturday is known as Caturday and is for the posting of cat pictures. Much as I love cats, on this particular blog, Saturday is instead going to be known as Raturday. So, to start off Raturday, I’m going to introduce you to my two boys, Billy and James. Apologies for the slightly blurry photos – these two have an aversion to sitting still when there’s anything as exciting as a camera to attempt to steal/chew.

Here’s Billy:

Billy

And here’s James:

James

They’re both boys, fairly obviously, somewhere between 6 months and a year old. Their hobbies include climbing, jumping incredibly large distances, chewing stuff, stealing paper and sitting on shoulders. Their favourite food is breadsticks.

I could spam this blog with a whole load of other rat pictures, but I’ll refrain. After all, I’ve got to have something to post every week. Beware though – lolrats may ensure. You have been warned.