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My own solution for this was to try from the very beginning not to emotionally invest in any of the animals, leaving any advocacy on their behalf for after I was gone from the labs. But I did manage a small rebellion: I filled out paperwork to (legitimately!) rescue a surplus rat that was completely healthy but due for euthanasia because she had been "forgotten" by the researchers and was now too old to be used. I took her home a day before the paperwork actually went through. I named her "Felony."

This article is my second rebellion. I am no longer employed by a lab and am a loyal servant of the Rat King, free to let people know that this kind of thing is going on. It's some pretty important stuff, and besides, I promised the rats I'd tell someone about them. Felony lived out the rest of her days with me. She never was particularly fond of people, but she had what I can only hope to be a fine time ignoring me and shredding little cardboard toilet paper tubes. You might find this vaguely reminiscent of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, only with a mouse instead of a chimpanzee. But that turned out fine, didn't it?

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Jessica Addams does not claim to have any answers. Her hallucinations concerning animal welfare, in which you are welcome to share, are available at www.animalfeasance.com. Ryan Menezes has lived with rats but out of poverty, not choice. Now, he lives on Twitter.

For more insider perspectives, check out 5 Horrifying Truths About Being a Medical Doctor and 5 Things You Learn Escorting Women Into an Abortion Clinic.

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Check out Robert Evans' A Brief History of Vice: How Bad Behavior Built Civilization, a celebration of the brave, drunken pioneers who built our civilization one seemingly bad decision at a time.