Salty, a white dumbo rat with a Christmas background.

I just found out that my photograph of my pet rat Salty was used for the 2011 rat calendar published by BrownTrout. My wife discovered this by accident as she was looking for a rat calendar and noticed that Mr. December looked awfully familiar. I didn’t know about this use of the picture because it was licensed through Alamy, a stock photo distributor, as they are often very slow to record sales and notify their photographers.

Salty is a male dumbo fancy rat. Fancy refers to rats that are bred to be pets and there are many varieties like dog breeds. Dumbo refers to the ears which are rounder and stick out more than a normal rat. Unfortunately, Salty is now deceased (I took the picture several years ago) as rats have very short life spans (2-3 years on average).

You can also see more pictures of rats in my photo galleries. Here’s the back of the calendar:

2011 Rat Calendar by Brown Trout publishing.