Mrs Dingle went on a bender for Hallowe'en

Maybe someone can explain this to me. I took some pictures so people will believe me. I change Jada's and Mrs Dingle's cage every day. It's part of our ritual together - and that includes cleaning out the nest box because it's soaking wet when I take out the newspaper. I use towels as bedding in the rest of the cage. I change it every day because I find if I don't her sores get worse. On Sunday when I cleaned out her nest box she decided that she wasn't going to put any of the fliers in her nest box - she started dragging them over to the corner where her hammock is and starting making a nest over there. And it was like Jada knew she was in a mood or something because she just stayed way out of the way. I had Jada's old cage in there because she had been escaping from the big cage so for about a week I had kept her in the smaller cage inside the bigger cage.

Jada's never really gotten tamed. I've never been able to pick her up - although she's very inquisitive and we have lots of kisses and she grooms my hand, she'll bolt if I try anything else - so I've just let our relationship go as far she wants. It's funny that the rat I found abandoned in the middle of a park is so tame I can pick her up and carry her around and she'll go to sleep on my lap but the rat I got from rat rescue is almost completely wild! haha! But I took the smaller cage out of the big cage today because Jada has stopped escaping - for the moment anyway!

But I digress - so any thoughts on why Mrs Dingle would stop using her nest box? She loves her hammock, but she didn't use her hammock as part of the nest - it's like another wall in this new nest. It might be a temperature thing because when I cleaned it out they were snug as a bug in a rug. And she's since started using the nest box again. She's in there feverishly as I type this up filling the nest box right now. It was weird that she just suddenly decided for one day not to use it. Don't you think?


1/4 of the cage filled with newspaper fliers 


The nest box and that end of the cage completely empty! 


Jada saying - "I'm staying the h-e-double hockey sticks out of this!"