Feeding Frolics

Dear Diary,

This is the month of the rat in Bloomington... there are rats here all the time but these rats picked the wrong neighborhood (tres upscale) if they wanted favorable publicity. Is there ever good news about rats? If there is, I should know it, as I am editor of a science journal on animal behavior. My job has taught me that rats are very society-conscious when it comes to their food -- rats choose their diet by choosing their friends -- a rat will cross a bridge made entirely of free-for-the-chewing rat chow to get the piece of rat chow in the paws or jaws of another rat. But they do not even need to see a rat eat a particular food to deem it the meal du jour; they only need to smell the other rat. Now, how did somebody figure that out? That's why there are journals on animal behavior.  Through a series of experiments eliminating various possibilities, the investigators discovered rats needed only to smell the face of a rat to form a preference for the food it had eaten. The food-laden face of a dead rat did not work, but the food-laden face of an unconscious rat did. Why do dead rats tell no tales?  The secret, I kid you not, is rat breath. Rat breath is potent stuff.... even college sophomores can choose which diet that a rat has been eating by smelling the rat's breath (so that is what happens to your tuition money). There is a chemical in the rat's mouth, carbon disulfide, which helps in the transmission of rat food preferences-- put it on food and rats will go for it. Rats can also tell by their Breathalyzer test which food to visit first in an evening and so know who feeds their cat at 8pm. In other words, Bloomington is up against a formidable social connoisseur.

Am surrounded at present not by rats, but fledgling birds. It's my own fault having feeders on all sides and the parents are making good use of them, leaving offspring to hang out while they slip off for a latte. Having raised baby birds I know something of the labors involved and why caffeine is mandatory. There is a saying; get a life...a simple solution is to get a bird. The labor involved even gets to the birds ...we once had a 30 day old baby cardinal, hardly old enough to feed himself, housed with a 15 day old baby cowbird ....my husband and I were trying to eat our dinner and had requested 15 minutes of silence...the cardinal complied, the cowbird did not. Finally the cardinal took a piece of stray burlap and stuffed it in cowbird's mouth.... three cheers for instinct.

Those of us in Monroe Country also have something to cheer about, there is an organization called Wild Care Inc. (Tel. 323 1313) that specializes in animal instinct, caring for birds and other critters properly and legally (federal and state permits are required to care for any wild animal). I talked to the director and she seemed nonplussed at the variety of wild things they care for, from skunks to raptors. I wanted to tell her my theories about how to raise healthy mealworms for feeding birds, but everybody else finds my theories boring and she is pretty busy right now. My editorial experience has not taught me much about mealworms but I checked the web and found a second grade class that had studied them. I now know the creatures prefer pink and blue over green and purple and turn left in a maze if they have just turned right and vice versa (probably the pink-loving ones). I was also informed that a mealworm bite hurts for only ten seconds.  Ten seconds is a long time in my book. A college site I found said that the bugs did not bite. Why the discrepancy? I suspect second graders have college professors beat when it comes to an intrepid approach to science. I have some mealworms in the other room and can try the experiment anytime I want...right now in fact. Then again, I can wait until the kid scientists grow up and submit their manuscript. Ah! The academic dilemma... publish or perish.