Meet Juarez

The other night we went to Jeff's house for the animal show.
We finally got to see the hedgehogs (which Saxon called porcupines):

The box turtle:
(Bridger keep trying to eat it)

The Bearded Dragon:
(Jeff had to leave the room for a minute and told me to grab it if it tried to run. I tried to pass the responsibility off to Mike who didn't want to chase it either. Luckily, it didn't run.)

The boys' favorite, KING HENRY:
(Bridger would just giggle and squeal every time he got to touch it, it was so funny!)

And now, I'd like you to meet Juarez, the rat we accidentally adopted...

Saxon always begs to keep one of Jeff's pets every time we do the animal show. Jeff, however, has told me that he will never give me an animal because he doesn't trust me with them. I don't blame him because I don't really like animals. Saxon was crying when it was time to go because he didn't want to have to give Juarez back. (Juarez, like on G-force). This Juarez, I'm afraid, might be a boy. Anyway, Jeff said we could borrow Juarez just to try it out. He gave us the box, the food and water bowl, food, sawdust, and some advice about animals. Apparently, rats make pretty good pets because they don't stink, they'll eat anything (our Juarez has already had peanut butter and jelly, bread, cranberries, apples, and anything else Saxon has decided to sneak into her cage), they don't bite, and they don't require a lot. So, we decided to try it out, and that is how we have Juarez. Saxon has played with her constantly since we brought her home. He LOVES her! So does Bridger. Juarez has turned out to be leverage for anything we want Saxon to do. All we have to do is remind him that if he doesn't go to sunbeams, go to bed, brush his teeth, etc., Jeff will take Juarez back. Saxon can get Juarez out all by himself, so every time I turn around, there's Juarez. We had our first scare with her today when Saxon let her go because "she wanted to run". I freaked out, but luckily Saxon found her under the entertainment center. Apparently they are pretty resilient too because poor Juarez has really been man-handled these last few days with my kids. The best part of this whole deal is (other than free entertainment for my kids) is that if we get sick of her, Jeff said we can just give her back. I told Holly that we got Juarez and she thought it was cute and brought Bryn over to see her. I told Andi that we got Juarez and she told me to have a baby if I need something else to take care of. Ha ha. We'll see how long this lasts...