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lprovenI have mice, and I'm delighted.
When I got back from Eastercon, I found a mouse in my kitchen. 20min of frantic man-versus-mouse manouvering, I had him inside a kitchen-towel tube with its ends blocked by pan scourers. I dug an old tank & water bottle out of the attic, some food from the airing cupboard, a jam jar filled with shredded loo paper for a nestbox, and since then, he's been living at the top of my stairs. For the first day or 2 he had to put up with kitty litter flooring. He's not too happy about his incarceration and legs it whenever I come in sight, but a month plus on, he comes out in daylight now and from the way that the water's going down and he now refuses fresh fruit, I think he's worked out how the water bottle works.
I've kept wild mice before. They're a bit like tropical fish: fun to look at but you can't handle them or interact with them. The jamjar as a nestbox is a planned move: when I need to feed him or clean his cage out, I merely approach the tank. He scarpers into the jamjar, I just pick it up and put the lid on (I've made lots of airholes) and set him aside. He cowers or peers out at me resentfully while I sort out his accomodation.
But now, I have more. Babies. 4 of them.
The back is not yet right, but it's improving. So I decided, last weekend, to sort out my garden. It's been getting kinda wild; the lawn was heading for knee-high. I was putting it off back in the spring, as last year, two tiny oak seedlings sprouted in my lawn (as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vanessaw noticed when she came round to tell me she'd passed her bike test.)
I quite like the idea of oaks in my garden, so I decided to mow around them. Except that I had to wait for them to come back into leaf so that I could find them in the long grass. And that took a long time.
But as of a few weeks ago, I rediscovered them. I staked them and then put 2l pop bottles with the bottoms cut off over them, to act as mini-cloches and make them easier to mow around.
But then the back was too sore to walk, let alone carry my lawnmower through the house.
But this weekend, I decided it was Time.
So on Saturday afternoon, I went to my mini-shed in the back garden and pulled out the lawnmower.
To a chorus of agonized squeaking.
A female mouse had nested inside the mower. Ideal place, really - warm, sheltered, full of dried grass clippings and moss for bedding. But in pulling the mower out of the shed, I not only scared her off, but the babies fell through the blades and into the wheels.
There were about 9 or 10 pinkies - naked newborns. Three were squished. There were also 6 velvets - fully-furred infants, but with eyes and ears still closed and their adult coats not yet grown in. One of these was crushed but feebly wriggling; one was partially eviscerated but still twitching in its death throes.
Mother, of course, was long gone. It's the right thing to do. An animal the size of a mouse, at the business end of the food chain, can't defend her litter - but if she flees, she can breed again. She had 2 litters on the go already, so she's been doing well.
One of them legged it out of the pile of nest material. Neffie, who was watching with interest, scooped that one up and strolled off, in a very rare burst of cat-like behaviour. (She's getting old now - she must be 10 or so - and is finally starting to act like a house cat.)
Scratch that one, I thought. But I'd already realised that their chances were very slender.
So, I scooped up all the living babies, fishing another couple from the recesses of the Qualcast, put the nest material in a dry bucket and deposited wriggling heap of babies on top. I went and found Neffie staring intently at an intact (but slightly moist) velvet which she had dropped near an ant colony. The ants were swarming over it and biting it. I retrieved it, blew off the ants and put it in the bucket with the others.
I thought about what to do while I did the back lawn.
I googled hand-rearing baby mice. Apparently, puppy or kitten formula is the best stuff to use. You can feed them off a cotton bud, or for larger ones, use soft white bread soaked in formula.
So, I got on the bike and pedalled off to Sainsbury's, who, it emerges, don't carry animal formula, but who do supply cat milk - low-lactose cow milk for adult felines - and inexpensive formula for human newborns.
And since then, it's been a lot of trying to hand-feed wriggling baby mice who don't like non-mouse milk. I've been keeping them in a small cardboard box of woodshavings and nest material in the airing cupboard, for warmth.
As I expected, the pinkies didn't make it. They all made it 36h but by the next night, 3 died - 2 while I was trying to feed them, in my hands - and the last survivor died Monday afternoon. Sad but I knew it would happen.
The four velvets have done better, though. I've managed to get literally one drop of milk into each of them 3 or 4 times a day, but it's kept them alive. They're losing weight fast but they're active and getting used to being handled.
After a couple of days, they were starting to chew on the cotton bud when I fed them, so I tried soaked bread. No interest. But I left a lump of milk-sodden bread in the box, sitting in a milk bottle cap.
Monday, they ignored it.
This morning, they slept clustered around it.
This afternoon, they started noticing it.
This evening, when I got back fromtwistedanimator's games night, they were enthusiastically munching away on it and it's gone down by a half. They're a lot more active, too. In fact, as I type, the box is sitting open on the desk next to me, and they've finally fallen asleep - one face down in the bread. Clearly, they were starving, literally, but now they've discovered food, they seem to be going to it with a will. I have read that mice find cows' milk hard to digest, but there's little else I can do and they seem to be coping.
They're still thin, but the increased activity is very evident, and they seem to have got to the stage where they can feed themselves - so I think they're going to make it and my job will get rather easier now!
They are a delight to watch. They're still blind and deaf, but they're getting quite agile - they sometimes climb up my fingers if I stroke them, and they walk around in the palm of my hand in a charmingly wobbly newborn-foal way. When it's sleep time, which is almost constantly, everyone tries to get under everyone else, resulting in a wiggly wobbly pyramid of mouselets, 3 deep. They're getting nicely hand-tame now, too.
So I may end up with 2 mouse tanks: one of unhandleable wild ones (if I can find my senior one - himself only a baby - some companions; contributions welcome) and another of tame wild brown mice.
Yay for small furry squeaky things!
When I got back from Eastercon, I found a mouse in my kitchen. 20min of frantic man-versus-mouse manouvering, I had him inside a kitchen-towel tube with its ends blocked by pan scourers. I dug an old tank & water bottle out of the attic, some food from the airing cupboard, a jam jar filled with shredded loo paper for a nestbox, and since then, he's been living at the top of my stairs. For the first day or 2 he had to put up with kitty litter flooring. He's not too happy about his incarceration and legs it whenever I come in sight, but a month plus on, he comes out in daylight now and from the way that the water's going down and he now refuses fresh fruit, I think he's worked out how the water bottle works.
I've kept wild mice before. They're a bit like tropical fish: fun to look at but you can't handle them or interact with them. The jamjar as a nestbox is a planned move: when I need to feed him or clean his cage out, I merely approach the tank. He scarpers into the jamjar, I just pick it up and put the lid on (I've made lots of airholes) and set him aside. He cowers or peers out at me resentfully while I sort out his accomodation.
But now, I have more. Babies. 4 of them.
The back is not yet right, but it's improving. So I decided, last weekend, to sort out my garden. It's been getting kinda wild; the lawn was heading for knee-high. I was putting it off back in the spring, as last year, two tiny oak seedlings sprouted in my lawn (as
vanessaw noticed when she came round to tell me she'd passed her bike test.)I quite like the idea of oaks in my garden, so I decided to mow around them. Except that I had to wait for them to come back into leaf so that I could find them in the long grass. And that took a long time.
But as of a few weeks ago, I rediscovered them. I staked them and then put 2l pop bottles with the bottoms cut off over them, to act as mini-cloches and make them easier to mow around.
But then the back was too sore to walk, let alone carry my lawnmower through the house.
But this weekend, I decided it was Time.
So on Saturday afternoon, I went to my mini-shed in the back garden and pulled out the lawnmower.
To a chorus of agonized squeaking.
A female mouse had nested inside the mower. Ideal place, really - warm, sheltered, full of dried grass clippings and moss for bedding. But in pulling the mower out of the shed, I not only scared her off, but the babies fell through the blades and into the wheels.
There were about 9 or 10 pinkies - naked newborns. Three were squished. There were also 6 velvets - fully-furred infants, but with eyes and ears still closed and their adult coats not yet grown in. One of these was crushed but feebly wriggling; one was partially eviscerated but still twitching in its death throes.
Mother, of course, was long gone. It's the right thing to do. An animal the size of a mouse, at the business end of the food chain, can't defend her litter - but if she flees, she can breed again. She had 2 litters on the go already, so she's been doing well.
One of them legged it out of the pile of nest material. Neffie, who was watching with interest, scooped that one up and strolled off, in a very rare burst of cat-like behaviour. (She's getting old now - she must be 10 or so - and is finally starting to act like a house cat.)
Scratch that one, I thought. But I'd already realised that their chances were very slender.
So, I scooped up all the living babies, fishing another couple from the recesses of the Qualcast, put the nest material in a dry bucket and deposited wriggling heap of babies on top. I went and found Neffie staring intently at an intact (but slightly moist) velvet which she had dropped near an ant colony. The ants were swarming over it and biting it. I retrieved it, blew off the ants and put it in the bucket with the others.
I thought about what to do while I did the back lawn.
I googled hand-rearing baby mice. Apparently, puppy or kitten formula is the best stuff to use. You can feed them off a cotton bud, or for larger ones, use soft white bread soaked in formula.
So, I got on the bike and pedalled off to Sainsbury's, who, it emerges, don't carry animal formula, but who do supply cat milk - low-lactose cow milk for adult felines - and inexpensive formula for human newborns.
And since then, it's been a lot of trying to hand-feed wriggling baby mice who don't like non-mouse milk. I've been keeping them in a small cardboard box of woodshavings and nest material in the airing cupboard, for warmth.
As I expected, the pinkies didn't make it. They all made it 36h but by the next night, 3 died - 2 while I was trying to feed them, in my hands - and the last survivor died Monday afternoon. Sad but I knew it would happen.
The four velvets have done better, though. I've managed to get literally one drop of milk into each of them 3 or 4 times a day, but it's kept them alive. They're losing weight fast but they're active and getting used to being handled.
After a couple of days, they were starting to chew on the cotton bud when I fed them, so I tried soaked bread. No interest. But I left a lump of milk-sodden bread in the box, sitting in a milk bottle cap.
Monday, they ignored it.
This morning, they slept clustered around it.
This afternoon, they started noticing it.
This evening, when I got back from
twistedanimator's games night, they were enthusiastically munching away on it and it's gone down by a half. They're a lot more active, too. In fact, as I type, the box is sitting open on the desk next to me, and they've finally fallen asleep - one face down in the bread. Clearly, they were starving, literally, but now they've discovered food, they seem to be going to it with a will. I have read that mice find cows' milk hard to digest, but there's little else I can do and they seem to be coping.They're still thin, but the increased activity is very evident, and they seem to have got to the stage where they can feed themselves - so I think they're going to make it and my job will get rather easier now!
They are a delight to watch. They're still blind and deaf, but they're getting quite agile - they sometimes climb up my fingers if I stroke them, and they walk around in the palm of my hand in a charmingly wobbly newborn-foal way. When it's sleep time, which is almost constantly, everyone tries to get under everyone else, resulting in a wiggly wobbly pyramid of mouselets, 3 deep. They're getting nicely hand-tame now, too.
So I may end up with 2 mouse tanks: one of unhandleable wild ones (if I can find my senior one - himself only a baby - some companions; contributions welcome) and another of tame wild brown mice.
Yay for small furry squeaky things!
