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We gave them a box of tissues for fun today: Click here for the full 1000x750 image.
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Jul 30, 2010 00:11
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We got our rats Trudy and Joan about a month ago I (me and squidtarts) and just today we went to Petsmart and the hairless rat that was there when we got the first two was still there. We decided we didn't want her to live in Petsmart forever so we took her home. In honor of this horrible girl on some other rat forum, we named her Wrinkles. Her Mad Men name, to go with the other two, is Lois. Now our playful Trudy hates us for bringing home a different rat, although Mama Rat Joan seems to be indifferent at worst to Wrinkles. But we only have one cage so we have to stick them all in there together. We did pudding and vanilla tonight and they seem okay with it, but Trudy and Wrinkles have gotten into a squeak fight three times tonight, all with me yelling HEY at them right when they started. Are they going to kill each other overnight tonight? Will they eventually get along? Should we rush out and buy a crappy small cage just so we can quarantine them for a while? Right now Trudy and Joan are sleeping on the top floor and Wrinkles is exploring the bottom, but I just don't know what kind of trouble they'll get into when the lights go out.
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Aug 3, 2010 03:56
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Yeah our shove stuff off the top too, and generally off the middle if they can. We tie tissue boxes up top with zip ties. I tried to get a bird perch to hold in stuff, but it was only compatible with vertical cages not criss-crossed ones (jump) so I couldn't get it to attach in the cage. Wrinkles has been living on top of the table with boxes and toys and stuff until we can get them used to each other. Last night we let her roam around the cage by herself with the other two out and she took all the paper in the cage and dragged it into the empty tissue box on the top floor to go to sleep in. Then when we took her out and put the other rats back in, they immediately pulled all of the paper out of the box and re-made their normal bed on the top floor. I don't know why, but our two old rats like to sleep exposed on the top floor. They've never particularly used any of the cardboard boxes or tissue boxes or the igloo in the cage as a hiding spot for sleeping. Only Trudy even ever will go in the hammock to take a nap, and that started because we put her in a few times when she was already sleeping. Boco_T fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Aug 4, 2010 |
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Aug 4, 2010 22:28
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Our outgoing dumbo rat Trudy just figured out a few days ago that she could jump off of the couch and go PTing around the floor, so that's all she's interested in doing now while the other two sleep on the couch like good rats. She's been mostly running around the general living room area so it's fine, and she particularly likes, for whatever reason, hanging out in the ball of rat cage lining fabrics under the cage. Luckily she hasn't figured out that the height of the cage on the tiny table it's sitting on is basically the same as the couch, so for now at least we can still leave the cage door open so the other rats can climb up and, what else, sleep on top of the cage or behind it instead of in it. Wrinkles gets along fine with Trudy and Joan now, although she does tend to annoy them sometimes when they are sleeping. I think at this point I've seen all of them turn each of the others over and groom each other. They never had more than a few mild scuffles, and they never drew blood. Wrinkles lived on top of the dinner table for about two days but after that they were fine in the cage together. This is what Wrinkles looks like:
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Aug 19, 2010 22:22
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Rat back feet look like disgusting dead shrimps.
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Sep 3, 2010 01:36
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We were also holding her in the mini pet carrier we got at Petsmart, which just zips up at both ends. I didn't want her to try and jump off the table while we were asleep, so I reluctantly closed her in when I went to bed. Like 2 minutes later I heard a thump noise, and basically I had zipped the end of a water bottle into the carrier so she wouldn't have to go all night without water. Well, she pushed the water bottle out and jumped out, and she was just hanging out on the table. So I gave her a drink, and then zipped up both ends and set my alarm early so I could give her more water early in the morning. I get up this morning and she had used hands and mouth, no idea how, to unzip the thing from the inside and climb out. Luckily she didn't try to jump to the floor from the table, but yeah, no zipper is going to hold Trudy back.
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Sep 11, 2010 20:25
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Indigestable posted:My two girls are finally socialized enough that I've been letting them have free run of my bedroom (supervised, of course). They're both really stoked for the first 10 minutes or so, but then the shyer, smarter one (Moose) seems to go into... the only way I can describe it is I guess sensory overload? She stops coming when I call her and just hides behind the dresser and refuses to move while her sister keeps playing. Is this pretty normal? Is there anything to do about it but gradually increase her playtime? And if they do hide, oh well they will come out eventually. The record so far was Joan hiding in the couch for 11 hours one day. But just this week they have been a lot better. We've never had problems with Trudy, that's just been her personality. If she's ever hiding, all you have to do is crinkle a treat bag and she will come running.
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Sep 24, 2010 01:37
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Our rats found some bubble wrap tonight, the kind with the gigantic bubbles as big as their heads. They went crazy and had all the bubbles popped within about 2 minutes. Then squidtarts got them some regular small bubble wrap and Wrinkles and Trudy tried to pop as many bubbles as they could before Joan absconded with the sheet. I think she took it into the couch. So yeah, they're getting bubble wrap for Chrimbus.
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Nov 18, 2010 04:07
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Our rats always have rat blocks available, but at night before I go to bed I always put in the second bowl with other supplemental foods. Lately the menu has been frozen peas, frozen lima beans, dried pasta, and Total 100% flakes. The following things happen every night: 1. Wrinkles eats almost all the pasta pieces immediately because they are her most favorite food in the world 2. Joan and Trudy eat all of the frozen lima beans and peas and leave the shells of the peas in the bowl 3. Wrinkles finishes the pasta and goes to the bowl and eats most of the pea shells. So I thought it would be nice if I just left the pasta and Total out so Wrinkles could eat something other than just pea shells. Boy, that was just about the saddest thing. Trudy and Joan immediately grabbed some lima beans and ran away, then Wrinkles got to the bowl. She pawed around in there, looked up at me, and ran to the cage door like "where's the pasta, dad?" I tried to get her to go up to the bowl again and get a pea or lima bean out but she did not care. So I put the pasta in there. That's just the kind of rat Wrinkles is.
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Nov 20, 2010 05:41
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Our rat Trudy had a hurt jaw from trying to jump on the coffee table and her medicine adventure was like over a month of taking up to 4 medicines at once. At first she just took it and would lick it off your finger. That didn't work so we mixed it with different things, those would all last a few days. Applesauce, ice cream, etc. Eventually she just knew how much medicine she had to take and was not interested at all so we'd have to have one of us hold her and squirt the medicine into her mouth. Eventually she had to get rat surgery because the abscesses wouldn't go away and they ended up figuring out it was a dead tooth that was part of the cause of the problem. So now she just has one bottom tooth and she looks super cute when she yawns.
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Dec 2, 2010 12:56
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I got a program on iPhone with all these dumb filters and so I've been using it to take pictures like these
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Dec 5, 2010 02:23
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Wrinkles really wants these Baby Cheez Doodles
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Dec 7, 2010 00:11
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Rat pictures from my Instagram: This is how I sleep  Click here for the full 612x612 image. Wrinkles got her Christmas Beard in!  Click here for the full 612x612 image.
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Dec 15, 2010 03:11
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I'm Joan and this is how I sleep
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Dec 15, 2010 22:04
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It snowed here today, so for the first time we put the rats into THE SNOW BOX  Click here for the full 800x581 image. EDIT: drat it squidtarts fine I'll get the ones off my stupid iPhone filter thing  Click here for the full 612x612 image.  Click here for the full 612x612 image. Boco_T fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Dec 17, 2010 |
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Dec 17, 2010 02:02
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Ours don't poop outside the cage. It took them like two days to realize that poop goes in the poop box, and now that's really the only place they poop. Wrinkles still poops on the shelves other than the poop box sometimes, but we got her after we got the other two and I also think she just has an attitude.  She does poop in the box, I've seen her.
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Dec 18, 2010 22:07
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Yeah I think at this point all three of ours have figured how to get one piece of food in their mouth and one in their paws and still run away with it.
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Dec 19, 2010 01:51
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Christmas Wrinkles and the Mystery of the Holiday Toy Purse
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Dec 24, 2010 19:52
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It looks like I finally figured out how to discourage the rats from doing bad things when they are out. We have a standard brown paper grocery bag that I stand up on the floor. If they do something bad, I just pick them up from what they are doing and put them in it. It doesn't hurt them or really do anything, but to get out they have to jump out. And most of the time they suck at jumping out so they land on the side of the bag and it makes a loud crinkling noise as it falls over. Sometimes they can even just jump out, but only Wrinkles is that good at jumping right now. Since I started it, they've finally started to abstain from pulling the towel out from under the door to our bedroom, as well as less trying to get onto the coffee table. That's not too cruel or anything, is it?
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Jan 11, 2011 02:27
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Count Piro posted:Does anyone else here rats give little tiny kisses. Sure way to gross someone out when the enter my home is stop by the cage for some rat kissies.
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Jan 17, 2011 02:32
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Yeah, Wrinkles will go into the wheel a lot, but when we got her she ran on her wheel in the pet store and her long tail even curls up into the right direction when she's running. Trudy and Joan have never bothered to even try it. Speaking of Wrinkles, I took this picture the other night and it's basically one of the best photos I've ever taken: 
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Feb 24, 2011 23:31
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We had been giving the rats Regal Rat for the past few months. When we ran out this week, for whatever reason, Sara decided they didn't like Regal Rat that much so she ordered them Harlan Teklab. There's still a bit of Regal Rat in their bowl, I've just been putting a few blocks into the cage in the morning. They immediately go get it out, but after the first two days where they would immediately eat it now they just try to stash it. The problem is, they won't stop loving fighting over it. Wrinkles tries to put the blocks on the second floor in the corner, Trudy tries to take it down by the wheel. Then Trudy goes and grabs one from Wrinkles's stash while at the same time Wrinkles is grabbing one from Trudy's stash. Then they get tired of that I just see that one is trying to eat a few bites off of the block and they start scuffling over who gets to take it back to their stash. Should we give up on Teklab? Should I just put like a huge amount in the cage to see if they get the idea that there's no need to build a stupid stash? Will they just stop caring about it eventually since it's their staple food that they don't even particularly like? They never particularly hated Regal Rat, they would just frequently eat half of a piece and add it to their other stupid stash pile. I just think they didn't have much cause to eat it because each night I give them all their fresh rat dinner that has, generally: lima beans, carrots, blueberries, peas, granola, Total flakes, dried cranberries.
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Feb 27, 2011 17:04
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:My girlfriend brought home some trouble!
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Mar 17, 2011 22:35
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Wrinkles is the most popular of our rats on Instagram because she always photographs so well:
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Mar 19, 2011 18:59
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Enzer posted:OK, so I finally broke down and got a pair. Two female fancy rats I named Yin and Yang. "Rat Yin Yang" is the title of this one: 
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Mar 21, 2011 21:56
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DorianGravy posted:Anyone have any good advice for socializing them better, outside of the normal "spend time with them" and "bring them treats"? That way they learn that when you pick them up you aren't always going to put them back in their cage and that they might get a treat. Before we started doing this, Joan would run away and hide in the couch and once or twice she spent like 4+ hours in there because she never wanted to be picked up. Of course now they know the sound of treats and they will run back into their cage when it's time to go up at night because that's the time I give out the best treats we have.
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Mar 24, 2011 22:48
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Our favorite "treat they're allowed to have an infinite amount of" slash "shake the container when they're doing something bad while out to distract them" is "Little Puffs Puffed Grain Snack" from the baby food aisle at Target, up & up store brand. The container costs like $2 and has about 540 little Cheerio-size pieces in it. Serving size for a baby is 90 pieces for a total of 25 calories, and they have a ton of flavors. The ones we have are blueberry, apple, peach-mango, and their favorite is sweet potato. They also get Baby Cheez Doodles from the same product line, and Gerber or something mixed berry yogurt treats. Other treats given more sparingly include oatmeal from the can, dried pasta, dried cranberries, and Ratatouille-branded croissants from PetSmart.
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Mar 25, 2011 21:56
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squidtarts posted:We buy baby cereal treats (they're called puffed grains or something like that) and the rats go apeshit over them, especially the sweet potato flavor. As a bonus, they come in a plastic canister that shakes very satisfyingly and is a good "C'MERE RATTIES" sound.
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Mar 25, 2011 21:59
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I'm gonna try and get her to the vet tomorrow, but I wanted to see if anyone reading the thread would have any ideas. Our white rat, Joan, seems to have lost some mobility in her hind legs today. She's doing a lot of dragging and basically doing that "rat stretch" most of the time she's in the cage when moving. But when she's out on the floor, she seems to move fine, and sometimes she does move fine in the cage just not most of the time. I've also seen her standing on her back legs to groom her face and she does kick back at you with her back legs if you hold her on her back and try to poke at her. She has been starting to get a fat belly over the past few months, but it's been pretty gradual and even so I don't think it's a tumor. It has just gotten to the point where her belly kinda touches the ground a bit compared to Trudy just being a little round in the belly. She still goes for treats and everything, and I just gave them their evening food and while she didn't get excited waiting for the food like she usually does she did still jump up onto the ledge to eat out of the bowl like normal. The only other different circumstances is that in the past week we did have to go out of town and take the rats with us so on Wednsday and Friday she spent 5 hours in the little cage with the other two rats, and the time between those trips they were in their big cage but didn't get much time out of the cage. While visiting the other house they did have some different foods but other than some cooked zucchini it was all just fresh vegetables that we don't usually have at home. Any ideas? EDIT: We only got them just under 8 months ago, so I don't see Joan being over a year old but I don't know how old rats generally are in the pet store by the time you buy them. Boco_T fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Apr 17, 2011 |
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Apr 17, 2011 04:04
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Yeah ours run into the cage at night because that's when I give out our best treats. Joan update: the vet isn't open on Sunday so we didn't take her, but on Sunday and yesterday she was acting completely normally and moving normally as well, so she must have just been in a mood on Saturday. We'll keep an eye out.
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Apr 19, 2011 15:25
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polyfractal posted:So I think I want to swap out my recycled newspaper pellets for towels as the main bedding material. It'll be cheaper and quieter, potentially easier to clean as well. Any tips on how to best do this? Are there types of towels that I should avoid? Any good ideas how to secure the towels so the rats don't tear them off (I'm thinking binder clips or something similar)? We eventually switched to Carefresh though because the cage smelled horrible very early (like 2 days vs. a week with Carefresh) and because our rats tore the poo poo out of it. Generally they would completely ruin at least one corner of the bottom and they'd also spend a lot of time trying to pull out excess fabric that they could reach through the bars of the cage. The cheapest bet is probably to go to Jo Ann Fabrics and get a few yards of whatever reasonably soft fabrics they have on sale. Then you can just cut it to the size you need. I'd say like $10 will get you two or three yards that you can use to make into two or three liners. I haven't really seen any place that sells towels for less than $5 each.
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Apr 23, 2011 16:34
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Superconsndar posted:Last night, in the middle of drawing, my tablet suddenly disconnected from my laptop. I'm sitting there plugging it into other USB ports trying to figure out why it wont recognize it, restart my computer twice, reconfigure all kinds of stuff, and finally am like "haha lmao my brand new tablet is broken that's just great."
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May 27, 2011 23:13
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The rat cage is right next to my computer desk, and the cable had fallen within reach of them. The shitheads pretty much severed it. 
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I just caught Joan on her back for the first time, but I think it was just because they were all flopping around wrestling and she is lazy. I only ever let the thermometer get to like 76.
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Jun 7, 2011 00:18
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We give them a lot of Little Puffs Puffed Grain Snack I get from the baby food aisle at Target. It takes about 4 to even get to 1 calorie, so they can have a bunch if you want to train them to do something. Also, they start to learn the sound of shaking it so you can call them to you with the container. There's also a lot of flavors: right now we have sweet potato (their favorite), banana, apple-strawberry, and blueberry. Earlier I saw Trudy cleaning Joan but it took me a bit to get my phone's camera up so I ended up accidentally with this great picture where Trudy is clearly hatching a scheme.
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Jun 15, 2011 22:34
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Wrinkles has a new game to play: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Trzc1nfgs
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Jun 21, 2011 00:32
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Amiss posted:There are few things cuter than the way a rat popcorns into the air when it's carrying something that's too big (e.g. Wrinkles @ ~0:07).
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Jun 21, 2011 22:41
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Check out what I had commissioned!
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Jul 7, 2011 00:16
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Is "slightly lumpy thing in the center beneath the ribs" a specific part of a rat's anatomy? Wrinkles seems to have a bit of a swollen lump there, but when I feel on Trudy and Joan, they seem to have a similar thing there, only not swollen. They can't all be starting to grow a lump in the same spot can they? It's not quite to the point where you can obviously see it on Wrinkles when she's just around, but it definitely feels weird.
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Jul 15, 2011 00:39
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On Trudy the spot seems to be about the size of a pea. On Wrinkles maybe a little bit bigger, but then again she doesn't have any hair. It did seem harder to find just now when I tried to touch them, even on Wrinkles, so you're right it could just be sternum or some part of her digestive system. Her behavior hasn't changed at all in the past few days at least. EDIT: In other news, just now for the first time in a while I did the old "shove 12 baby cereal bits into a toilet paper tube and fold the ends over." What did not remember is that Wrinkles is the only one that knows how to solve that puzzle. Trudy was lurking, but apparently the game I was actually playing was "give Wrinkles 10 treats, Trudy 2, and Joan none." Boco_T fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Jul 15, 2011 |
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Jul 15, 2011 02:12
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| # ¿ May 7, 2024 02:58 |
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these rats are eating the eggs like so many smashmouths  
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Oct 2, 2011 16:21
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