A rat may be an unusual pet, but as we see in today’s story, they’re very easy to train.

Unfortunately for the roommate, they’re not as easy to untrain!

Let’s see how the story unfolds…

The Smartest Rat – A gift that keeps on giving!

So my college roommate and I were definitely more frenemies than friends. We’ll call him H (not his real name).

H had a pet rat (not legal in our dorm, but no one really cared.)

H was well known for every time he got back from class, picking up the rat and putting it on his shoulder for a ride as he puttered around the room.

He agreed to watch his roommate’s rat.

One fall afternoon H told me he was heading home for the weekend and would I take care of his rat till he got back on Sunday.

Me, having just studied Operant Conditioning in my Psychology 101 class, smiled and said sure!

I had a plenty of homework and English paper to write this weekend anyways and would be in the whole weekend, so no problem!

Que H leaving on Friday about 3pm.

He bought a snack and shared it with the rat.

Yours truly was broke at the time and could only pull $5 out of the bank account. So me and $5 traipsed our way over to the local 7-11 and bought a package of salted sunflower seeds and a 16 oz Coke.

I of course picked up said rat and put it on my shoulder as soon as I got back to our room.

I calmly walked over to my desk, pulled out a pair of scissors and cut off the top of the the sunflower seeds package and had a few…. AND fed the rat one……

Then I petted the rat, said very nice things in a nice voice and put it back in it’s cage so I could finish my coke.

He had fun feeding the rat and seeing how smart it was.

Three minutes later, I picked the rat back up and put it on my shoulder and fed the rat another sunflower seed, said nice things, petted the rat and put it back in it’s cage….

It really was a nice rat!

After about 20 or 30 times, the rat would even wait a minute or so very patiently to get his reward and get petted.

So I started putting the rat on one shoulder and then feeding it on the other one………

And then I started waiting till the rat had crossed back and forth several times while he checked for the seed before I fed him……… It was a VERY smart and motivated rat!

AND THEN I started holding the seed next to ear so the little rat whiskers tickled!

The next day, he continued to work with the rat.

It was about 10 pm, and I still had a paper to write, so the rat got put down for the night and I finished a partial draft on my English paper…

Saturday after brunch I picked the rat up and let it walk back and forth several times before feeding it next to my ear.

We practiced that for a while before I got back to my paper and homework, but after dinner we started over again in earnest!

He really seemed to enjoy playing with the rat.

This time, I waiting until the rat was on the opposite side of my shoulder and slipped the sunflower seed into the little notch on my ear (with a little trepidation not wanting to be bit accidentally) but he was a very gentle rat during the retrieval and there was never a mishap!

Between mostly finishing my paper and stretching out the feeding time for the rate between multiple ear checks (oh and it tickled!) I was mostly out of Sunflower seeds and decided to save the last 20 or so for Sunday.

His roommate returned that afternoon.

Sunday morning the rat and I finished our mutual entertainment fairly early and I went out for brunch and spent the rest of the day cleaning up my nine page paper (still can’t remember what it was on.)

Sure enough about 5 pm H comes back and I’m sitting under my loft, feet on my desk playing computer games.

H and I greet each other, and it’s all I can do not to have a grin on my face!

He was entertained listening to his roommate’s surprise when the rat looked for sunflower seeds.

H does what he always did.

Put his bag down on his desk, walked over the rat cage and said nice words and put the rat on his shoulder.

The rat of course did what it had been doing all weekend and promptly walked over and stuck its little nose and whiskers in each ear looking for sunflower seeds!

H, having never experienced rat whiskers in his ears, reacted as expected with several surprised curses and the ignominious and rapid removal of said rat back to its cage!

Only to confusedly pick up the rat and put it back on his shoulder again after a few minutes with foreseeable consequences!

He finally admitted what he had done.

Keep in mind I’m only hearing all of this and doing my VERY BEST to not bust a gut out loud!

After a few minutes and several up and down events H loudly declares, “What did you do to my RAT!”

After a good deal of uncontrollable laughing on my part, the noise brought in the guys across the hall.

Which made it even worse when H demonstrated what was going on!

I eventually explained what I had done….

What’s even better is that he never was able to figure out a way to UNTRAIN the rat!

I wonder what his roommate did to make him want to get revenge.

Let’s see how Reddit responded…

This reader points out that rats are great pets.

Another reader was concerned for the rat’s health.

This person could really relate to Coke and sunflower seeds.

Another person shared that he used to train his sisters’ pets.

I bet the roommate wishes he had never asked someone to watch his rat!

But the rat…he was pretty happy.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.