This article is from the Spring 2000 AFRMA Rat & Mouse Tales news-magazine.

From Nichole Royer
Tired of scrubbing out water bottles with a bottle brush. Here is another way to get them clean. Take a handful of uncooked rice and pour it into your bottle. Fill the bottle with enough water to cover the rice. Put your hand over the opening of the bottle and shake vigorously. Pour out the water and rice and rinse the bottle.

From Karen Robbins
Rats love to chew. They also love things to sleep/hide in. The large cardboard rolls that carpet comes on fulfills these two basic needs of a rat. The large cardboard rolls are thrown out after the carpet is used from them, and you can ask the local store owner if you can have a roll or two once they are finished with them. I found a local store had a whole pile of them in back of their store. They were more than happy for me to take as many as I wanted. You have to remember these are very long rolls—up to 16′ or more and you will need a large enough vehicle to bring them home in (or cut them on the spot into shorter lengths). We were able to fold them in two to fit them into the truck. I just had my dad cut them to the right “rat size” and now I have enough tubes to last a while. Since these are the thick rolls, it takes a while for most rats to chew through them and need a replacement tube.

From Nichole Royer
Do your rats chew on your 16 oz water bottles, but leave the caps intact? There is a very inexpensive way to replace them. The 20 oz plastic soda bottles fit the caps exactly. Just rinse out and take off the label. I like coke bottles because their shape is easy to hang and hard to chew.