So my college roommate and I were definitely more frenemies than friends.

Well 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 put it on his shoulder for a ride as he puttered around the room.

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. Yours truly was butt-ass 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.

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!

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!

This time, I waiting until the rat was on the opposite side 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.

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 shit eating grin on my face!

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!

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

After a few minutes and several up and down events H loudly declares “What the fuck 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 a way to UNTRAIN the rat!