Of course rats like to get sick at the worst times possible (like when you’ve got a week and a half to try and figure out the main arguments of 50 or so books for your department comps). Not that Alejandro is just now getting sick–he’s been sick for some time. But now is the time that he’s decided to get sick to the point where even someone like me who wants to keep him alive forever has to concede that his quality of life has slipped below an acceptable level. So, like any responsible pet owner, I finally admitted that it was about time for Alejandro to be euthanized.

Now the tricky thing about euthanizing rats is that there really is no good way to do it. They’re not like dogs or cats that you can take to the vet and keep them company while they get a shot or put on a little gas mask. Most vets that I know who euthanize rats generally put them in a little gas chamber, which is not an inhumane way to go, but it does mean you don’t get to be with them generally when it happens. And having lost a few rats during surgery, I know full well how hard it is to forgive yourself for just handing you little guy over to the vet and only getting to see them after they’re dead. Not to mention that most rats really stress out when you try to take them anywhere… so, like many other rat owners, I had hoped to turn to home euthanasia.

There actually is a pretty simple technique for home rat euthanasia, one that is supposed to be painless and enables you to comfort you rat in their own home as they gently slip away. The problem is: it doesn’t always work that way.

Now, maybe I shouldn’t have tried the home CO2 method knowing that Alejandro had respiratory problems, but I had understood this method to be a gas anesthetic method and hence appropriate for a rat with respiratory problems. Moreover, Alejo certainly wasn’t in a state of panic or distress at the time we started the process.

After having read over the instructions and set my aquarium up accordingly, I got my poor little guy settled in and began the process. Shortly after pouring over the first 2-cup container of vingear and getting the CO2 flowing into the chamber, Alejandro started gasping like mad for air. I did as the site suggested and pinched off the bag and blew into the aquarium to try and disperse the CO2, but this did little to nothing to help abate the little guy’s panic. At this point, I wasn’t really sure what was best to do–continue and hope he would lose consciousness quickly since the stress I had hoped to avoid had been induced anyway or stop completely since he was obviously not going peacefully.

At first, I thought maybe it was best to just leave him in there for a little bit longer in the hope that he would quickly lose consciousness. I’m sorry to say that he didn’t. Instead the gasping only intensified, and finally I couldn’t take seeing him gasping harder than I’ve ever seen a rat gasp before (and sadly, I’ve seen my share of rattie gasping attacks). He kept looking at my arm (which had been in there from the beginning to try and offer him comfort) and feebly tried to wrap his paws around it to climb out, wondering the whole time I’m sure why I wasn’t trying to help him out.

Well, finally, I did take him out. He wasn’t going down peacefully at all, and I could no longer stand to watch him panic and strain. I’ve seen my little Martha rat choke to death on a bit of food when she was sick, and while it was painful because I felt powerless to help her, she went much faster and seemed much less distressed than Alejo was in the CO2 chamber. After I took him out, it took a good ten minutes or so to calm him down again, but calm down he did and now he is stretched out in his cage, breathing heavily, but not gasping and squeaking at me for help.

The only thing that I can figure is that perhaps the concentration of CO2 was too high, and this is why he experienced such distress before being anesthetized. I’m not entirely sure that this is what happened, since he did remain in the chamber for at least a minute or two before I finally took him out, and I would think that the high concentration, while painful, would have worked swiftly. However, since this is the best hypothesis I have for now, then I would like to use my experiences to suggest to others looking to euthanize their poor ratties that they try to find a way to administer the CO2 more slowly. I notice that the other website mentioned on the RFC’s euthanasia page listed above suggests both pouring the vinegar slowly and having the tube at the top of the container initially so that the CO2 diffuses down more slowly (although they also use much smaller containers). Even though I covered the tube at the bottom of the container with a thick layer of fleece, perhaps the sudden infusion of CO2 at the bottom of the chamber still increases the likelihood that the CO2 concentration will reach noxious levels too quickly.

Anyway, I just thought I would pass my comments and experiences along since I know that putting a rat down can be a difficult decision for rat owners in the fiirst place, but once having made that decision, no one wants to see their rats struggle and suffer before they die. I think that there is still good reason to believe that anesthetization by CO2 is a good technique, but it does seem that some considerable caution is in order for this technique. Maybe others who have tried this method sucessfully can suggest safeguards to help others not share in my experience (and to help me not share in my experience again when I finally decide when and how to try and put Alejo down again).

Who knows, maybe the little guy is just trying to tell me it’s not his time, and I should get my butt back to work on my comps. Still, why can’t rats just chase down a bottle of sleeping pills with a bottle of vodka like the rest of us? :-(