Friday the 13th a Hard Day for Noah...

 

Noah holds his pet rat Nibbles in her final hours

I shot a photo today that was one of my hardest assignments in a long, long time. 

It started around 1:00 p.m. with a scream from the office off our living room, "DAD, DAD, Nibbles isn't moving". I went in to see what was happening and Nibbles one of our two pet rats was laying on the bottom of its cage, curled up in a ball, not moving. Nibbles usually greets visitors to the office in the top of the cage, looking for a petting or food, but not this time. I opened the cage and picked up nibbles and she was still alive, but did not have much time left. We have had Nibbles and her sister Sandy for over two years, which is a typical lifetime for rats.

In the mean time I had Noah hold Nibbles as she passed on to the big cheese in the sky, tears flowed like a river. Every once and a while, she would open her eyes and look at him as he held her like a little baby. Noah out of the blue asked me to take his photo with Nibbles before she was gone and I was amazed at the way he was handling the whole thing. He brought Nibbles over to my desk and held her for me to snap a shot with my iPhone, and at that time she opened her eyes, as Noah did his best not to cry. I snapped a few photos as tears came to my eyes watching this whole scene unfold. 

After about another hour, we found a proper box for burial and filled it with cedar wood chips, like in Nibbles cage, laid her in and closed it for good. Emotions finally calmed down, I took Noah to Sandusky, got him some school clothes and some soccer cleats, and sushi. As of the posting of this blog, all is calm, and Noah is doing fine. Sandy our other rat seems a little depressed, but I am sure she will be getting plenty of attention in the near future.

Comments

[Beau Dodson]

What an amazing and sad photograph. You captured the moment. I am going through over a 1000 entries in my Google Reader and this is the first one that grabbed my attention and made me stop. It is wonderful that you are teaching Noah to care for animals in such a way.

Thanks for sharing the moment and giving me just a bit more hope in the next generation.