ratastrophy

Today was a very bad day in the lab.  I actually cried.

I was running the rats on the treadmills, like I do everyday.  Except today, one of the rats found a way to get her tail caught in the treadmill.  It got trapped underneath a divider, beneath a metal cover, and wrapped around the treadmill belt.  She squealed so loud and it was obvious she was in pain.  I had to put on special gloves to go near her because she was stressed and biting anything that came near.  In order to free her tail, I had to disassemble the treadmill.  It took me 10 minutes to get the pieces apart (because they are not supposed to be disassembled) just to be able to free her tail.  Sadly, by that point the damage had been done.  (I'll spare you the gory details.  Just know that there was lots of blood.)  We had to call the vet, who came and amputated her tail because it was so badly injured.  I felt awful because the poor rat was in so much pain and I felt guilty because I was the one who had put her in the treadmill.

Ultimately, the whole accident was not my fault, nor could it have been prevented.  We realized that there is a severe design flaw in the treadmill.  I plan on writing a strongly worded letter to Columbus Instruments to make them aware of what can happen on animals using their treadmill.  I photographed everything and plan on including them in the letter.  (Again, I'll spare you the photos because there is blood in them.)  It is due to a piece of metal casing that covers part of the belt assembly that runs the treadmill.  There is just enough room for the rat to get her tail under the lane divider and underneath the casing where it can get entangled in the treadmill belts.  In a treadmill that is especially designed for rodent use, there should be no room for tails to get caught in anything!  I'm pretty upset that this was able to happen.  Hopefully they will seriously consider redesigning the treadmill so that this can't happen to other animals in the future.  (Also, it puts a serious kink in my experiment.  She will be out of the running for at least a week and will most likely require some reconditioning...if I am able to get her to run at all.  There is a good chance that she will suffer PTSD and not run on the treadmill again.)

Hopefully the next few days will be better.  I just feel so sad for my poor rat.