Finally! Pix! Let's Introduce Clementine:

This is Clementine. Like Hilda, we aren't sure what her age or background is and whether her and Hilda may be sisters. She is definitely more feisty and nosy than Hilda and roughhouses with the other ladies quite a bit. Clementine and I had to get to know each other a little bit sooner than otherwise may have happened as Clementine came to us sick. We had noticed shortly after coming home that she had a rash or something on her front paw (you can see the redness in the pic) as well as some kind of problem with her chin.

We ended up taking her to the vet to find out what the problem was. The paw is just dermatitis but the chin problem turned out to be that her mouth was full of pus. The vet said that he could clean it and I could take her home and give her antibiotics and see if that did the trick. The other option was that he could put her under and clean it out and see exactly what the problem was. I opted for the latter and she had her mouth cleaned out, the dead tissue removed to clean to bleeding tissue, a stitch and then reversed from the anesthesia. Poor baby. I'm starting to learn with rats is to just pay the money and get it over with because it will alway be something!

So then more fun with medicine. She didn't want the chocolate syrup (what is it with these rats, anyways??? Pass on chocolate????????) or the yogurt so we had to do it the fun way. She is a forgiving and sweet little girl so it wasn't that bad. At least she didn't do the Nibble trick which is to put the tongue in a certain way so nothing gets down the throat. She wasn't happy, but did swallow the medicine. Yay! The vet gave her pain killing drops and some kind of saline as well. She is doing much better. She wasn't happy to have been separated from the others during the first almost week after the mouth repair, but we couldn't take the chance that they other nosy parkers wouldn't have made it worse or pulled the stitch or cause some kind of trouble that only they could cause.

We will enjoy having Hilda and Clementine with us for as long as they will have us.