Rat snuggling

There’s a joke. It goes like this:

Q: How do you know if someone has ADD?
Reply: I don’t know, how do you know if someone has ADD?
Punchline: Wow, let’s go ride bicycles!

Ok, so now I’ve set the tone, I actually managed to pick Oreo up. Mind you, she wasn’t too pleased and lodged several objections. It pretty much went down like this:

Me: [Traps Oreo in the play pipe and uses it to extract Oreo from the cage] I have you now!

Oreo: Darth Big Scary Hand! I should have known!

Me: Come out of the tube!

Oreo: No you’re going to eat me. I shall escape. [Starts running from one end to the other to find one end that doesn’t have a big scary hand nearby]

Me: I’m not going to eat you!

Oreo: [Leaps out of one end of the pipe, goes “AAAAAAAAH!” and runs all the way back in as I pick it up, then comes zooming out the top end, where she’s picked up]

Me: Worst escape ever.

Oreo: AAAAAH! I’m gonna DIE!

Me: [Gently stroking as Oreo runs around like mad] No, seriously, just calm down…

Oreo: Aaaaah! Aaaaaah! Aaaaaah! Ooh, this is nice *snuggle*.

Me: That’s it?!

Oreo: What’s this? What’s that? Hey, that looks interesting! Ooh! What’s this? More pettinz! What’s that?

Me:  Tomorrow I’m buying you some Ratalin.

Oreo did calm down and when I came to put her back in the cage, she even clung to my hand a little. Once she was back in, she didn’t run and hide out and even went back to playing with the tube. She seemed a lot less skittish and in turn, Trudy calmed down too.

However, while she’s quite happy to come and snarfle treats from an open palm, she still doesn’t want to come out and play again, and I couldn’t trap Trudy with the same trick when I tried.