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Sarah Ball Likes Rats Too!

~concerning the High School senior who took her senior portrait with her pet rat, Rotten Rattin, on her shoulder and then was hassled unnecessarily by the High School Principal~

~Sarah Ball and Rotten Rattin~

Over a year ago, my friends and I had a spirited discussion on the ratlist mailing list concerning a High School Senior, Sarah Ball, who had the brilliant idea of posing in her senior portrait with her adorable pet rat, Rotten Rattin. The picture was greatly admired by the ratlisters and made many rat fanciers smile. Normally, the folks on the ratlist would not know about such an adorable picture, but evidently Sarah and Rotten Rattin made the news because her High School Principal (let's call him, "Principal Meanie"), took it upon himself to reject Sarah's lovely senior portrait from the school yearbook. This created a stir, at least in the heart of one young rat lover, Sarah Ball, and, as a result, many other rat lovers all over the world were given the unique opportunity to see the High School portrait of a young woman and her pet rat, both of whom we did not know, but who we greatly admired and sympathized with. We felt she was unjustly hassled and that her freedom of expression was violated and that the rat was really cute!

Well, you can imagine my surprise when I was contacted out of the blue, over a year later, by Sarah Ball herself! It seems that she "googled" herself and found my Web page where I talked about her and the news story I saw online. As an off hand comment, never expecting a reply, I had asked for permission (on my "Links" page) to use her High School portrait on my Web site, so she obligingly wrote back to me over a year later to say that I could put her pictures up on my Web site.

"Pictures, plural!" I thought, "Pictures means there are more than one!" So I immediately contacted her and was amazed to find many wonderful images sent to my inbox the very next day. I hope to get an interview with Sarah to fill in more of the details about what happened back then. It was an interesting story, and the questions that a rat fancier would ask are very different than what some intolerodent journalist would ask. So I hope to have a better interview for you soon. But for now, behold the glorious photos. They are fabulous. Thank you Sarah!

With much gRATitude,
Susan, the one who likes rats

Quick Facts:

• Rotten Rattin was a Siamese buck
• Rotten Rattin passed away on January 23, 2003
• Sarah's boyfriend of 3 years, Garrett, surprised her by giving her a new rat for her birthday on January 25, 2003
• Sarah named her new rat Tater Tot
• Tater Tot is a cream colored buck with ruby eyes
• When Tater Tot is acting up he gets called Tater Snot
• Sarah Ball didn't pursue any legal recourse against Principal Meanie because he was in a whole heap of trouble concering other school matters
• Sarah wants to join the ratlist!
• The dog in the portrait with Sarah and Rotten Rattin is a Feist Terrier named Dixie who is owned by Sarah's mom. Feist Terriers are also known as Rat Terriers but you can see that Dixie and Rotten Rattin clearly have a cordial relationship.
• Dixie likes to chase squirrels

Sarah Ball today! Still smiling! Still fabulous!