..."lab rat..."

The fellers have been reading Harry Potter. They started the series on
the 30+ hour sojourn to grandma's for Christmas ... now the are
Hogwarts addicts. One of the main characters has a pet rat .....

Our neighbor boy is a freshman at Kansas State, majoring in Animal
Science. He's home for winter break and heard we were vaccinating 49
steer calves that arrived last week. He offered to give us a hand. On the trip to the farm he filled us in on his first semester at our Alma Mater .... he bought a pet rat for his dorm room....our boys were facinated by his "tales."

So the boys began researching....
Rats cost $9-15. Cages .... can be pricey.
At recess the next day, the 1st grader asked his former preschool teacher (who had a
class hamster) if she knew of any second hand cages for sale (gross,
huh)?  She happened to have a ferret cage someone had donated in
storage at the school.
So the fellers came home yesterday with a cage. They soaked, scrubbed
and disinfected it; loaded into the trunk for a future stop at the pet
shop.

This morning they were working on the Hubs. He called it the "full rat
press." My husband grew up on a farm, where you keep rats OUT of your
home .... not in them. He whispered in my ear before heading off to
the mill to feed America ...."Do not get a rat in Valpo today."

I predict  future rat-takes will follow.

The full rat press included such persuasion as,"God created rats, they
are one of His creations."

To tie this life lesson into the word of the Lord, I found a passage in the Old Testament in Leviticus.

Leviticus 11:29

The Message (MSG)

 ^29-38 "Among the creatures that crawl on the ground, the following are unclean for you: weasel, rat, all lizards, gecko, monitor lizard, wall lizard, skink, chameleon. Among the crawling creatures, these are unclean for you. If you touch them when they are dead, you are ritually unclean until evening. When one of them dies and falls on something, that becomes unclean no matter what it's used for, whether it's made of wood, cloth, hide, or sackcloth. Put it in the water—it's unclean until evening, and then it's clean. 

The Old Testament was written before Jesus the Messiah had come to Earth.  The Jewish people lived a life of ritual, following the laws of the Old Testament.  The amazing thing about the New Testament and the fullfillment of the prophecy of the Messiah is that we are no longer bound to all of those rituals.  We are "washed clean" by Jesus, the Living Water.  Jesus died for our sins, and we are washed clean by our belief he is our Savior.

So even though we have negative feelings about "creatures that crawl on the ground," my boys can keep working towards their goal of having one as a pet.... as long as they are good owners, having providence over them ... cleaning up after them.

P.S. (post script) The "full rat press" continues.  We visited the pet store in a neighboring town.  Rat prices there are only $4.99 What a bargain.  The boys have called a family meeting to practice their persuasive skills on their dad, a farm boy at heart.