Cotton Rat = evil with teeth

Oh sure, the guinea pig/rat mixed looking creature pictured here actually looks cute.  

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Looks are so deceiving. 

I'm not from the South so I have never seen one of these in the wild before and its not something that we have dealt with at work before.  

Lucky me I got to cover a schedule today where a mistake order came in and the investigator decided to keep them anyway.  So I got the joy of taking care of them when they came in.  This requires us to remove them from their cardboard shipping containers and place them in animal housing.  I'm assuming these are everyday normal rats as the name "Cotton Rat" on the box means nothing to me since I have never seen one.  I recruited a co-worker to help it go faster.  As soon as we opened the box we knew that these were not your average rat just based on the face they they didn't look like a regular rat.  Then came the fiasco that was transferring 25 rats from 5 shipping containers.....OH MY GOD they were the jumpiest things I have ever seen, they were also the evilest things I have ever tried to handle in my life!  I got a nasty bite on my finger trying to lift one from its cardboard box to its new home the whole 2 seconds that it should have taken....stupid rat, and eventually we called for reinforcements after the first 2 boxes.  

Needless to say I learned a lot today about Cotton Rats after my experience I looked at anything I could find about them online.  

They are known as Cotton Rats because they make their nests out of cotton.  

They were one of the first widely used models in the 1940's for Polio before the mouse was used.  

They are primarily used now for research in respirator syncytial virus (RSV) & Filariasis.  

They are not classified as aggressive but is noted that they will bite when touched (thanks for the warning on that one!)  

Their tails deglove easily, and the easiest way to handle them is using leather garden gloves or a handling device....

all good things to know before trying to handle them!!!  

You learn something new every day!