Wilma found a fantastic forever home just across the border in WA. She officially went home almost 2 weeks ago after her quarantine was over.

She has a few new girlfriends now and is fitting in nicely!

Her new family sent us this super cute picture of Wilma and two of her girlfriends after a bath:

Olive is currently being introduced to Arbutus who recently lost his partners in crime due to old age. Arbutus is also a former LMR rattie, from the Megacolon Litter (luckily he doesn't have MC though!).

Today their family posted a picture and I think "Olive and Arbutus sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G" comes to mind ;-)

We're so thrilled to get updates from all these wonderful ratties in their forever homes, please keep them coming!

It has been a few weeks since we last blogged about the New Mexico Ratties so it's time for a quick update:

All the ratties spent the past few weeks in New Mexico. The girls were fostered by Travis and his wife and the boys were fostered by Lynn. All of them were treated for mites during that time. We planned on spaying a lot of the girls but sadly things didn't turn out that way. On the first spay day we sent 5 girls in and sadly two didn't survive surgery. It was just devastating. With these kind of devastating rates we opted not to do any additional spays while they were in New Mexico. Instead we concentrated on finding more foster and forever homes to house any potential litters. Luckily none of the 20 intact spayed girls turned out to be pregnant which was a huge relief.

Travis and his wife ended up adopting 4 of the girls.

Travis and the remaining ratties started making their way up North a few days ago. He made a stop in Boise, ID to drop off 4 ratties with our friends Krislyn and Michelle who snatched some of the cuties up for themselves. Then he went on to Snohomish County where he visited family and from where the ratties destined to WA & OR were picked up by Jan. Finally today he is flying to Bellingham, WA to drop off the few destined to forever homes here in BC. They ALL have forever homes :-)

Anyway, we received the first pictures of one of the ratties in his forever home and we just had to share it! Ann in Everett, a previous adopter, added little Casper to her existing mischief. She writes:

Casper arrived in Washington on July 6th and is wonderfully sweet! I can't believe this boy started out life as a feral rat!

We hope to add more updates as we get them from their forever homes :-)

Today our new Alberta volunteer Ennien drove her from Calgary to Cranbrook, BC from where she caught a flight with Pacific Coastal (if you fly within BC, please fly with Pacific Coastal, just a wonderful, caring airline!).

Ennien wrote the following about wee Wilma: "Oh she is just the friendliest, lickiest little girl! We played kissy-face peek-a-boo out my sleeve, she smiled at me, she bruxed near my ear aaaaaaaand used my jeans as her latrine because she was too comfy to crawl over to use the litterbox *LOL!* What a treasure this little girl is!"

For a rat free province, Alberta not only has gorgeous rats but also extremely sweet ratties! All 7 that have made a lucky escape are just wonderful little rattie ambassadors.

Wilma arrived safe and sound about 20 minutes ago and is exploring her new cage in her quarantine foster home.

On May 20, Animal Control in Las Cruces, New Mexico was called in to deal with a very large hoarding situation gone wrong. Several hundred rats were involved, and Animal Control started live-trapping them and delivering them to the Mesilla Valley Animal Service Center. The shelter had never dealt with that number of rats before, and was quickly overwhelmed.

A local Las Cruces rat advocate, Tiana, heard about the situation and went down to check it out herself. She found that despite stress and over-crowding, many of the rats were friendly, sociable, and surprisingly healthy. She adopted three rats on the spot, and began to contact other rat-lovers all around North America to try to get at least some of these pet-quality rats out of the shelter and into good homes.

Word went out, and several more rats were pulled by Lynn (who drove for 13 hours to get them into safety!) and adopted to good homes.

Rescues near and far began to take an interest, and organizations in California, Chicago, and even us here in Vancouver B.C. Canada said they had space to take some of these rats.

Unfortunately, there are no established rat rescue organizations in New Mexico, and the sheer distances involved seemed impossible to overcome. Meanwhile the media just made these rats look like monsters, the house was called "House of Horrors" (just google "Las Cruces NM rats" and lots of stories will pop up).

Murphy's Law was also hard at work: Tiana needed surgery and needless to say had to take it easy. Lynn who was willing to drive to Las Cruces again ended up breaking her ankle.

Then Travis, a pilot and private plane owner in Los Alamos NM, heard the news. Travis and his wife have helped many rats in need, and he immediately offered his transport services.

The New Mexico volunteer network began scrambling to find a way to put all these pieces together. Unfortunately, by the time we had succeeded, all rats had already left the shelter as they were given away on a "first come, first serve" basis and wildlife rescues as well as snake owners were lined up fast. It was absolutely heartbreaking for us as we tried so hard and were *this* close. We hope some of them found good homes or at least humane fates.

Once the Mesilla Valley shelter understood just how extensive and committed the rat lovers' network is, they agreed to hold the rest of the rats for us that they were trapping this week.

On Friday, May 28, Scott and Jean, two volunteers went to the shelter and picked up all the remaining rats. We ended up pulling 31 rats. These are the last ones, no more rats will be coming in from this situation.

The rats spent last night at Scott's in Las Cruces, who ended up falling in love with 3 of them and adopted them.

Travis and his wife flew the rats to their place in Los Alamos today and will foster them for a few weeks. Everyone seems to have taken the flight in stride and without difficulty.

Now in Los Alamos, all the rats will all be treated with Revolution, will get whatever veterinary care they need, and some females will have access to emergency spays.

In early July, Travis will be flying the rats destined for LMR and a few members of RatsPacNW to Seattle, WA so we'll soon have a whole bunch of PEWs looking for forever homes!

It's been a few very long days, full of ups and downs. What rescues goes, this was probably one of the hardest to pull off, it really seemed impossible at times, which makes it even more special that out of the hundreds of rats, at least 42 got a second chance!

LMR can't thank Lynn, Tiana, Scott, Jean, Travis and his wife enough for working so hard to get those ratties into safety!!! Many thanks also to the wonderful local people who offered to foster!