Pet Forum / Mammals / Rats / October 2007

1. Obtain a pair of small child's trousers (pretty cheap from a charity
shop, or a supermarket - I paid £4 for mine from a well-known supermarket
chain starting with T).

2. Unpick the seam (or cut, if you're lazy!) down the middle of the seat
of the trousers, all the way round the crotch and up to the bottom of the
fly, or where it would be if there was one.

3. Cut away only the front panel of the trousers (along the side-seams,
and across at about crotch level).

You should be left with two tubes each of which has a large flat
rectangle on one end (buttock plus leg). If you are not, something's gone
wrong. Blame my instructions :-)

4. Hem the edges, if you can be bothered, sewing in 6 loops - two at the
foot end of the trouser leg, two at the top of the trouser leg (where you
cut away the front panel earlier), and two slightly longer ones on the
far corners of the rectangle.

With any luck, you have a hammock which leads into a tube.

I just made one of these for my two boys and they love it. I used
trousers which had a furry velvety texture on the outside, so to make the
hammock I turned the trousers inside-out. The other leg I didn't use to
make a hammock-tube - I only used the leg, and made it a simple tube with
an exit-hole half way along, to give them some variety.

I haven't seen anything of this design in the shops, which is a pity - my
little guys seem to like it more than either a hammock or a tube.

Rosemary