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This is a new one for me

I saw this. Many responders were upset with the parents for allowing the child a pet rat. That being said, there were at least 32 fatalies related to dog bites in 2013.
 
So tragic. I wonder if the store will be found liable. I had never heard of this disease, is there any thing they could have done to have avoided selling the family an infected rat?
 
I heard of rat bite fever...

...back in the '90s. I believe it was Bill Brant of Gourmet Rodents who got bitten by a rat and developed the infection. If I remember correctly, it was very serious and he was in the hospital. But he is the only person I personally know who suffered this disease.

However, it was really on my mind about a week or so ago, when I got my first "real" rat bite in all of the years I have been raising rats and mice (since the '70s). I have had little nips before, but this time a big, male rat really sank his teeth into my thumb. I put it (thumb, not rat!) under cold water and pushed hard on it to make it bleed as much as possible, then under water again, hoping to really clean it out. Sure did bleed A LOT!! Guess it worked, since it has been well over a week now and it pretty much healed up without any sign of infection.

I haven't looked up the disease, although I certainly would have been reading more about it if my thumb had shown any sign of infection. I am so sorry for the loss of the child. But if the animals looked healthy, I am not sure what the shop could have done. Unfortunately, people don't want to accept the fact that anything we do in life entails some risk. Do you really want to lock a kid away from EVERYTHING in order to TRY to keep him totally safe? Even that wouldn't work - he still has to eat, drink, and occasionally get in a car. That said, I can't even imagine how difficult it must be to endure the loss of a 10 year old child for a seemingly stupid reason. I can sympathize with them wanting to make "somebody" pay for it, even if there is no logical reason to do so.
 
This can be tested for. As the article noted, a breeder can test a percentage of their stock and rule out the disease.
 
One of our members here got it from a rat bite, that she got from Petco (or Petsmart), one of the two. She was very sick for a while.
 
Myca said:
I saw this. Many responders were upset with the parents for allowing the child a pet rat. That being said, there were at least 32 fatalies related to dog bites in 2013.
Click to expand...

I agree, this is a fairly unique case, and unless the large chains want to raise the prices on rats about 1000% it isn't feasible to test every rat. I think rats make amazing pets, they are smart, funny, and loving. One bad case can really set off a bad rep for an animal, and as bad as I feel for his family, I think due diligence on their part (learning about rats as pets and the risks they may be faced with) could have maybe gotten them to test the rat, but not likely. I think this is one of those cases where no one wins.

And people upset for the parents to allow the child to have a pet rat? I personally believe that when your time is up, there is no stopping it. Instead of a rat bite he could have been crushed by a falling piano or run over by a semi or eaten a hamburger with e Coli. When it is your time to go, you will go, the "how" depends on what you are doing when your clock ticks down.
 
"Researchers from one of the largest labs in the country told Team 10 a breeder would have to test eight rats to be 95 percent certain a colony of 100 rats or more did not have the disease.

They said it would cost around $40 per rat to run a test just for Rat-bite fever, though other tests could be performed at the same time for an additional cost. A rat costs between $6 and $11 at Petco. "

So if you have a large contract with Petco, you test the percentage that is recommended by the CDC. It is the cost of running business. Approximately 8 per 100 breeding colony. Once you have clear breeding stock, you should be good.

I don't buy the 'go when it is your time deal'. If that were the case, we could leap off a mountain, not wear seat belts, swim with white sharks. Think about an entire load of people on a doomed air plane. It was all of those people's time to go and they all managed to get on that one plane?
Petco and the breeder are at fault. Petco knows they sell these animals to children. They should take steps to make sure the breeder has tested at least the minimum recommended by the CDC. They are not some Mom and Pop store. They are a national chain.
 
Myca said:
I don't buy the 'go when it is your time deal'. If that were the case, we could leap off a mountain, not wear seat belts, swim with white sharks. Think about an entire load of people on a doomed air plane. It was all of those people's time to go and they all managed to get on that one plane?
Click to expand...

Yup. I have always believed this, and yes, when two hundred people die in a plane crash it was all of their times to go. And if you leaped off a mountain, not wore a seatbelt, or swam with sharks then it was your time to go if you die, if not then it wasn't. A girl survived a skydiving accident recently, falling that far should have killed her but it didn't. Not her time. SIDS babies? They still don't know why it happens, it just does, they did nothing to cause their death but it happened.

I totally respect everyone's belief, this is just mine.
 
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