Hi, all, I am new here.  Came over from the Acme board and wanted to see if anyone here can help me figure this out.  I'm just gonna paste what I posted at Acme.  Hope you don't mind.  

Well, today is the day. I dropped my Bubba boy off at the vet to be neutered. Wish us luck!

Both the ladies in there commented on his 'unusual' coloring. I've never seen anything like it either. (sorry, sure wish I had a digital camera!) I'm not sure, but I think he may be what you would call a mismarked hooded...I don't know really...but the non-white parts are like a tri-color...light grey, fawn, and some black hairs down his back, on his head, and some on his side. Belly is white. Any ideas? Everyone that has seen him and is somewhat familiar with rats comments on how neat his coloring is. I've got to try to get a pic!

The color is the same throughout, well, except for the white.  Man, I wish I had a camera.  I'll try to take a pic with my lame ol' web cam tonight.

My rat booklet says there is a rare breed called "restrictred".  I think it sounded somthing like that, it also says the genes in this breed are ussually all screwy and they ussually die at birth.  That's why they are so rare.  Maybe that's what you got.  I havn't read that book in a bit since it told me pine bedding was safe for ratties , so I'm not really sure, you may want to see if you can look up this breed though.  I can't find anything on it.  (Did that book mislead me again?)

What book is it? Title? Author? There are a few out there that are REALLY bad...

Serenade, is it like calico cat coloring?  Patches of each color?  

Actually, it's 'her' posts, but that's okay.    Anyway, you are correct.  The hairs are inter-mixed.  I didn't get a chance to really look at the hairs last night, he was neutered yesterday, but I did notice, I was wrong about the black...It's just fawn and a light grey.  No patches, the hairs are mixed like that on his head (which is actually more grey) and then the line down his back is mixed.  He's so neat looking, I need to get a pic to show!  I will soon...I hope!  Oh, and I'm glad at least one person understood my ramblings!    Hopefully I've cleared it up so I can get more responses.  Thanks!  

Well, I have a fawn bareback, and I did notice the hairs closest to her skin were gray.  I need to look at Bubba again, closer.  Hopefully he'll be feeling better today!

Yes, it was posted on several rat boards.  Unless breeding proves otherwise, the consensus was that it was not calico, but chimera - a condition where two eggs fuse and develop into one baby - just so happened that the two eggs were destined to be two different colors.  

Geocities does not allow remote linking of images...

(neither does Tripod or Angelfire, for the record... it's too much of a load on their servers)

Oh, wow.  I hadn't heard that part.  Fascinating!  I wonder if that would cause anything 'wrong' later on.  Interesting.

Darn, I couldn't see the pic!

The book is called "Rats' (Boy is that creative or what?), it was written by Susan Fox.  I looked through the book a whole lot.  Don't beleive a single word this book says!!!  It is filled with garbage.  I will post a few things it told me that make me really angry!
Quotes from the evil book:

"A fourth pattern of spotting-restricted-is very rare and quite unlikely to occur in domestic pet rats, since pure bred animals of this variety die soon after birth.  Mixed-bred males of this type become sterile at arround 3 months of age.  Restricted rats are white except for limited color arround the eyes and ears, although some closely resemble the hooded rat."
This is what made me post in the first place, I know doubt it is true, sounds really funky, I think the author made up half this book!
"Among the most widely available kinds of bedding are pine shavings.  Though varying in how finely they are ground, pine shavings are good absorbers.  They are cheap in nearly all regions of the country.  However, pine shavings do not deodorize well."
I can think of many bad things about pine shavings, not being good deoderizers is at the bottom of my list.  Could you please tell the world that they are deadly?
"The minimum size cage you should look at is 16''X10''X10'' to allow sufficient room for young rats.
The cage calculator says less then half a rat will fit in that cage, I'd like my ratties whole please.
A single rat is perhaps the luckiest, for their is no competition with any other rat for your attention.  A single rat might also be more devoted to you since you are the only one with whom it can play.
That's just mean.  Keep your rattie lonely, just so he will pay more attention to you.  Yeah this is all about me, right?  That poor lonely rattie isn't important!

There's more, but I won't post it.  Just stay clear of this book, ok?

When I got my first girls I had a book by Susan Fox too.

I was actually looking through it the other night and was amazed! Unfortunately she's not the only author to beware of - I've got another book (can't remember the author offhand) who claims that rats are low-maintenance pets.

Well maybe I'm doing something wrong, but compared to any of the other pets I've had (with the possible exception of the horse) rats are far and away the highest-maintenance!!!