i just found a baby rat.

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Rats make great pets.
Probably the best you
can do with a rodent.

Tell your mom that boogers are for keeps there is no giving boogers back,boogers are for life and when you save a booger you cant just "flick" it into the wilderness.I am an official "pet care specialist"(Yes that is a real title and I worked hard for it)and I know that you cant just wipe buggers under the couch cushion once it has bonded to you......(or it will hunt her down and eat her toes while she sleeps....just ask Willard).

Tell her that keeping the pet and taking responsibility for it is good practice for learning responsibility and compassion for other living things.If all that doesnt work,tell her that you just want to fatten it up for Thanksgiving and then you can make her a nice rat,green pepper and pinapple kabbob.....

I have a baby rat of my own.

If you found it you should get rid of it somehow, animal control perhaps? It could carry disease. There's nothing wrong with having a pet rat, but get 'em from a pet store.

you will never be able to release it, and as many have said, it could be carrying disease, Weil's disease comes to mind - you do not want to catch this if the rat is carrying.
On that though, are you sure its a rat - it looks more like a vole to me...

Nobody respond to this, because I'm not trying to steal the thread, but once I found a small mouse in our storage building at work... I tried to use a large pushbroom to sweep it out the door (don't tell me I could have picked it up, no way in h...) and after I did it just layed on the ground. It looked like it had been attacked (I found a snake hiding near the same building a couple days earlier) and was hurt anyways. I felt so bad, because it was walking before I pushed it out the door, but hardly moved (it was breathing, but wouldn't do more than move it's legs a little bit and look around) after it was outside. I felt bad and after it was still in the same place an hour later, I brought out a piece of swiss cheese (we have a fast-food area where I work) and sat it right next to his head.

Unfortunately, the next day, it was still there and hadn't touched the cheese. It was no longer alive, of course. I put on a pair of rubber gloves and tossed the poor guy over the hill.

I should write a song about poor ol' mickey.


(pwi)

Tinky, I wouldn't recomend keeping it, especially since I think you've said you have other animals in your house. Pet rats and wild rats are very different, They are not usually as smart, they are harder to care for(imo) and they carry a lot more diseases then just Bubonic plegue (typhus for example...[size=0]others to I am not gonna list them all[/size])

but if you really want to take care of it
http://www.rmca.org/

more specific
http://www.rmca.org/Articles/orphans.htm

I breed rats for my snakes, and the adult breeders are pretty much my pets, so I'm kind of experienced in keeping them. I use a 30-gallon aquarium with a screen lid which is held down by plate-weights. I use Carefresh bedding and one of those hanging water bottles. They will eat dog food as it has most of the same nutrients that rats need. This also takes care of the gnawing need because dog food is very hard and crunchy. Nonetheless they still will enjoy some wooden chew toys, and they will use an exercise wheel if you have room for it -- not necessary but you'd need a large wheel if you wish to use one.

A wild rat, if healthy, should be cared for in similar fashion to a domestic one.

I think that you should keep the cute little baby.

Just FYI though, that pic looks like a baby mouse. My baby rats of that size generally have much smaller ears, more elongated bodies, and shorter tails. Your baby kind of looks like a field mouse or deer mouse (Peromyscus sp.). In that case you'd keep it pretty much the same way as you would a rat, just on a smaller scale.

You breed rats for your snakes? How many snakes do you have, I thought it was only 3 or 4. How often do they get fed?