Runatun Irre & Runatun Ismo, littermates, was born on the 1th of April 1997, and they were both silver fawn. Irre was rex, and Ismo smooth. They were both extremely gentle and wonderful pet rats, which at first surpriced me, since they were so closely related to Ippe.
Irre & Ismo was the sons of Apollonia/Aristoteles Ios, and Apollonia/Aristoteles Inna, two of the babies from Ikaros litter with Ina. Ios was a very gentle rat indeed, and showed nothing of his brother Ilo's dominant behaviour. Most of the rats bred at Runatun Rattery at this time were black, chocolate and chocolate agouti. Jalle, who had Runatun Rattery, liked the chocolate agouties best, so I could have all silver fawns that appeared in his litters, except one, Runatun Mercurius.
I was happy that Jalle kept Mercurius for breeding, because that only meant more silver fawns in the Runatun Rattery, that I could have if I wanted to. Mercurius was a brother to Irre & Ismo, from a later litter with the same parents, and he had the same gentle behaviour as Irre & Ismo had. Mercurius was a favourite of mine, even though I didn't own him myself.
Irre & Ismo was best friends with Ixus and Ippe, and they were the lowest ranked rat in the cage (lower than Ippe, who was castrated). I had learned by now that Wistar males prefer to be top dog in the cage. And I realized that the best silver fawns was the ones that did not compete with the top dog over that position. The less the male tried to compete for a higher rank, the gentler the rat was in all circumstances. This fact was something I used a whole lot when I later started breeding again. I saw how much their behaviour was like the behaviour of my favourite rat Fnutten, and I really just wanted to get rats that were as much like Fnutten as possible. Not just in colour, but in behaviour as well.
Runatun Saturnus was Mercurius litterbrother, they were only two babies in that litter so they were both extremely big, 120 grams at the age of only 22 days. Saturnus was sold to a breeder.
When I had these rats I built a lot of agility fences, and both Irre and Ismo enjoyed agility. They weren't good at it, but they obviously liked it.
Irre died young, he died in his first summer (1997), he developed torticollis and had to be put to sleep. Ismo died in December 1997, so never turned a year old.
Copyright Eva Johansson.
Last update: 14th of October 2005.