Splinter was rescued from the air force base in Alamogordo.
The people who had him were snake owners who were trying to breed their own food. They quickly realized that they didn't enjoy the snakes nearly as much as they thought, and were in over their heads in rats. I was unable to take the two pregnant females, although I very much wanted to. I was able to rescue this guy, though, and can only hope the girls found a good home.
Splinter was a rex, beige hooded rat. In his old age he started to go a little bald, the way rexes do, and he had a permanently disgruntled expression thanks to the curl of hair between his eyes. We used to call him Mr. Grumpy-face.
He fell into place as Basil's right-paw man, becoming the beta rat of the colony. The two of them were very close, and Basil took his loss hard. Splinter passed away of some sort of neurological issue that caused slow, creeping paralysis -- a stroke, perhaps, or a brain tumor.
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