Stripe faced Rat?

Alantoo

Well-Known Member
I have been watching three of these with the white stripes visiting the bird table over the last few weeks...I happened to have my air rifle to hand when I spotted this one yesterday...

When I first got a glimpse of one I thought it was possible scar tissue from one I had shot but not recovered but it had, if you see what I mean...but then seeing three of them at one time realised it was genetic...

Any one seen similar?

Alan
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There badger rats ,, very rare indeed, £50000 reward for one alive ,,,, you plonker Rodney !! 😭😭

:)

It did occur that I might be like that poor unfortunate scientist who cut down a Bristle Cone Pine to study only to discover that it was the oldest one in the world...

:(


Alan
 
Possible Answer.

An old chum came round the other day...forester, country man, professional story teller, humanist funeral eulogist...same age as me within a week.

I showed him the photo asked his opinion and he laughed out loud...As a teenager he had kept rats and bred them in all colours...he was so successful that his bedroom and the garage and the garden shed were shoulder high in cages and his mum told him to get rid. He took them all to a disused quarry in the next valley over, three and a bit miles from his home village and let them go.

That quarry is two fields away (690 metres according to google maps) from where I shot the rat 50 years later!

Alan
 
Possible Answer.

An old chum came round the other day...forester, country man, professional story teller, humanist funeral eulogist...same age as me within a week.

I showed him the photo asked his opinion and he laughed out loud...As a teenager he had kept rats and bred them in all colours...he was so successful that his bedroom and the garage and the garden shed were shoulder high in cages and his mum told him to get rid. He took them all to a disused quarry in the next valley over, three and a bit miles from his home village and let them go.

That quarry is two fields away (690 metres according to google maps) from where I shot the rat 50 years later!

Alan
I was thinking that it looked like a domestic rat that had escaped.
 
It could be a genetic condition called leucism. I once saw a crow with patches of white feathers so wrote in to Sporting Gun to ask about it, the veterinary correspondent said it was this. We have since had three generations of leucistic Blackbird in our garden with the condition.
 
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