Unlikely Friendships : 47 Remarkable Stories From the Animal Kingdom (21 page)

{M
ISSOURI,
U.S.A., 2009}

Cuteness only gets you so far: occasionally, even the Easter bunny gets dumped. But sometimes pink-nosed holiday rejects in Missouri get taken home by Sheryl Rhodes and her daughter, Lauren. And those rescue rabbits get a sweet deal: the freedom to roam in their own room, loads of attention from their devoted owners, and similarly low-to-the-ground friends to pal around with.

In addition to two rabbits, the Rhodes family had a pair of guinea pigs, Timmy and Tommy. But when Tommy died, the owners decided to try introducing Timmy to the rabbits, which had a ten-by-twelve-foot room with food, litter boxes, and all the fixings for an uncomplicated existence. All three are lovers of crunchy
vegetables and are litter trained. It seemed a perfect matchup.

A turtle also inched around the space, though he kept to himself.

“The rabbits had never really bonded with each other,” says Sheryl. “But when Timmy offered his companionship, especially to the one named Baby—the snubbed Easter bunny—we were thrilled. They really warmed up to each other. There were lots of nose touches and nuzzles between them.” If Baby was feeling spry and hopping around, Timmy would squeal and waddle after her, she says. “But mostly they were very lazy critters together, just lying around.”

When Sheryl or Lauren took Timmy out of the room for petting or grooming, Baby would hop around looking for him, poking her nose into spots where the pig might hide. Meanwhile, the rabbits had a cardboard box set up off the floor so they'd be able to get away from Timmy if they chose to. But within a short time, one of the animals chewed a hole in the bottom of the box. “Suddenly, Timmy was in there, too. I guess if Baby had wanted him out, she could have gotten rid of him. But she didn't seem to mind.”

{O
HIO,
U.S.A., 2009}

Rats. They're filthy, disease-carrying pests that skitter through trash-strewn alleyways with those awful hairless tails trailing out behind them. Right?

Set aside such notions. Rats are actually smart little mammals with an unfair reputation for doing nothing but skulking about. True, the big brown ones peering from city sewers are hard to love. But just consider them as survivors. Cleaned up, their kind can make great pets. They're also, of all nonrat things to be, ticklish, and they've been shown to experience convoluted dreams about recent happenings, just as humans do. And in the case of Peanut—a white rat owned by Maggie Szpot of Ohio—they are capable of becoming smitten with their mortal enemy, the cat.

Ranj the cat came to Maggie as a stray, so she expected that with rodents in the house, his hunting instinct would rear its feisty head. Not so! Ranj showed only curiosity toward the numerous rats Maggie rescued. Peanut and Mocha, a pair that Maggie got at the same time, were no exception. “When I first brought them home, I put them in a fenced-off area, but Ranj just jumped right in and started sniffing them. He was very calm—there was no aggression at all,” she says.

Soon after they met, Maggie says, “Peanut developed a special liking for Ranj and began to follow him everywhere. Ranj liked her back, but would sometimes try to avoid his pesky friend by hopping onto anything off the ground. Peanut would just climb up after him!”

Nowadays, Peanut loves to snuggle with Ranj and will crawl fully under the cat's haunches when he's seated. The rat appears soothed by the cat's presence, and will close her eyes as she snuggles up to his furry warmth. Ranj sometimes gives Peanut a tongue bath or rubs his head against her when she gets close to him, Maggie says. In return, Peanut licks Ranj's face or scrambles over his stretched-out body. Though Mocha is less friendly to the cat and will chase and bite his feet, he joins Peanut and Ranj at mealtime. It's an odd scene: two rodents munching kibbles from Ranj's bowl as the cat stretches his neck down between them for a bite, “each without a care in the world.”