Nester confirmed

Yup. It’s River. She wasn’t just taking advantage of a cosy hammock yesterday, she was relaxing in her own handiwork.

Though apparently she’s a perfectionist and it just wasn’t good enough. When we passed the cage earlier, she was busily tidying up — pulling out the bits of paper that were hanging over the edge of the hammock and neatly tucking them back in. It’s a far more effectively stuffed pile and there’s enough in there now that she can bury herself completely.

She was so well buried that it took a good couple of minutes of snack bag rattling before she managed to climb out far enough for me to give her a treat.

Of course, this does mean that the other two have very little bedding left. I shall have to give them some more kitchen roll, but I’m afraid it will just end up in the hammock with the rest. She is a very determined little ratty.

Nesting behaviour

Every now and again one or more of the ratties goes into nesting overdrive. This goes way beyond the usual lining of the sputnik with cardboard and paper for comfort, this involves carrying as much kitchen roll, shredded paper and cardboard substrate into the designated nesting area as possible.

This week they have decided that the top hammock would be improved by being stuffed with as much paper as they could carry, with a couple of handfuls of Finacard to fill in the gaps.

Most times I’ve checked, it has been an empty nest. It was looking less like nesting and more like they were trying to get rid of the paper by shoving it in the most out-of-the-way place in the cage — they even took the paper out of their main sleeping spot, which is looking really bare now.

When I looked in on them earlier though, River was curled up in the hammock, unimpressed with being disturbed for photos.