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Meant to post here sooner. I'm Ronan!

RonanRat

RonanRat

what doing.
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Greenville SC, USA
Hey there, my name's Ronan and I'm from Greenville, SC. My real name isn't what I go by so that's why my username is the way it is. I'm 21 and male.
I mostly own rodents; like rats, hamsters, and guinea pigs. But I've been wanting a rep for a long while now. I'm still debating on if I want a king, ball python, or rat snake, but I suppose I'll figure it out in time. I also have an interest in bearded dragons and some inverts like tarantulas and hissing cockroaches.

My hobbies are taxidermy, video games, and training my rats to preform tricks. Nice to meet ya.
 
Ball pythons are great animals. I definitely advocate getting one.

Taxidermy sounds like a fun hobby. What kind of animals have you taxidermied so far? Do you study under a mentor? I've always found it really fascinating (and I enjoy looking up taxidermied work on ebay), and there's a shop about an hour away that focuses on taxidermy.

I recently kept a pair of female rats I had bought in a batch as feeders. They don't seem very pleased with my existence and run away from my hand when I try picking them up but they are very docile and have never bitten. They chill out more when I finally have them in hand or in lap, but boy is it difficult to pick them up.
 
Yeah I definitely find BPs to be the most aesthetically interesting! Not to mention with my stepson around it's great if he's able to hold a more docile snake like that.

So far I've pretty much just cleaned and sun-bleached bones, skinned a fox, squirrel, and raccoon, and one time I got really lucky and was able to preserve a whole baby rat because it was a stillborn (conjoined, looks really neat). I'm studying by myself but I have some family members giving me advice. Thankfully most tutorial videos are just scattered around the internet, but I have plenty of books, videos, and advice to help out.

With feeders it can be a lil tricky. Most of em are just the same kind of pet rats, but never socialized with boring colors. That's what makes em "feeders" I suppose! I own three rats that were going to be feeders but they were all socialized so it made it tons easier. Not gonna lie though, the really plain white with pink or red eyes is my favorite color. :)
 
It's pretty easy to get a docile ball python, so they are pretty good for kids (provided supervision). My cousins love our ball pythons. And they are definitely aesthetically interesting. Do you have any interest in breeding them, or solely looking for one as a pet?

Your taxidermy projects sound interesting. Did you do them for customers or primarily for yourself? Do you have any photos of your work? I'd be pleased to see :) And it's awesome that you're doing this by yourself. I can imagine it's pretty messy... does it take up a lot of room? What kind of tools do you use?

And yeah, I don't think these were socialized. They were both bought barely weaned though, I'm guessing 2-3 weeks old max. They're friendly when in my lap and will explore and climb up onto my shoulder and groom themselves, or sit in my lap and groom themselves. But if I let either of them onto the ground they take off and go and hide in inconvenient locations and run away when I try to get 'em. Starting to learn that I can't let them off my lap :)
 
I'm planning on just owning them as pets. I've decided breeding is a bit too expensive of an investment for me!

Primarily I do it for fun/myself, but sometimes a friend will ask if I can clean something for them for money. I don't have a lot of space so I can't do everything I want to do (like I'd love to be able to butcher but I don't have the room) so I do stuff that doesn't require much. For the most part my tools are beetles (for de-fleshing because my landlord isn't so keen on water maceration on my porch), pliers (for taking the teeth out), vegetable scrubbers (for scrubbing off skin) and glue for gluing skeletons together or placing teeth back into a cleaned skull. The rest is mostly sanitizing and sun-bleaching. I don't have as many tools as I'd like but what I have gets the job done.

If your rats were female that'd explain it too. Male rats are lazy and are content to just hang out with you and eat, but females HAVE to run around and explore everything and generally be pains in the butt. I love em, though. They're easier to find than males too, not sure why.
 
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