I was about to clear out an old 'sent' message to a friend when it
occurred to me this might "titillate" some of my LN friends! It was
written to describe my visit to a local children's museum with my
pre-teen and early teen grandchildren, where they each promptly went off
to 'do their own thing' last Christmas vacation.
<For myself, I looked right and left to see what would engage my fancy,
when what to my wondering eyes should appear a 'low-down' (kid level)
display of "Mammals" that have to take close care of their young. There
was a domestic mouse with 6 wee mouselets, undulating in the back corner
as they nursed and nudged. But the domestic rat was in the front side of
her cage, part way up against the glass.
I tell you, it was worth the whole price of admission, much as I hate
rodents in my domicile. I stood there for 30+ minutes, waiting for her
to get tired of that hassle and get up and shake them off. "Touched out"
doesn't begin to describe it! I kept thinking what a great video shot to
make and play at a LLL leader's meeting, just for laughs, to hear their
comments. (One woman stopped by, and I said "Now that's REALLY tandem
nursing!" She looked a little horrified and expressed shock to see more
than one size and wondered why they didn't 'separate them out' when a new
litter came! I said "Well, that's just not the way it happens in nature."
She said "Oh, I guess not!" and walked away quickly before her kids could
start asking questions, I guess.
I came to the conclusion that either Mama rat had 3 separate litters
still nursing, or that the oldest litter was still nursing, but was also
reproducing, and THEY had had a litter of young. The hairless ones with
closed eyes appeared to be only a few days old. Reminiscent of a diagram
of an embryo almost. At times, they almost looked to be rooting on the
larger size ones that were chugg-a-lugging away on Mom. I hope they
survive. Mom's gonna have to get up and go eat and then race back to the
wee ones before the others catch on, I bet.
There appeared to be either a middle-size litter and a larger-size
litter, or else certain littermates got a better start in life and were
growing better. It was comical in a way to see them stick their nose up
in some part of the cage, sniff, then head straight for mom, poke around
randomly, then decide to get really aggressive. They stepped on top of
the others, stuck their nose deep down between the other snouts, pushed
with their feet to roll over on their backs and dove in in earnest, and
latched upward, with their feet and tails entangled with all the rest.
It looked to me like the teeny ones were getting stepped on, and I was
'rooting' for them, when one of them lucked out and went in underneath
her tail, and apparently struck gold, because he didn't come back out.
Later, when I stopped for 10 minutes again on the way out of the museum,
she was still patiently at it. Most of the time, she appeared to be
snoozing, or at least her eyes were closed. Every once in a while she
would semistand so that everyone had to either hang on for dear life, or
pop off and fight for a spiggot again. I saw then that there were really
3 little teeny ones. I was thinking what a wonderful thing for a mom
with a 2 1/2-3 y.o. nursing toddler, to take them to that display while
she was in late pregnancy and let the little one see the behavior and
remark "That wasn't very nice, was it? The bigger one just stepped on the
baby and is not
sharing at all with him! Etc. Etc."
Jean
*******
K. Jean Cotterman RNC, IBCLC
Dayton, Ohio USA
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