|
Post by anielka on Aug 7, 2013 0:55:09 GMT 10
So to cut a long story short a neighbour was persuaded to use a humane trap to catch her one rogue mouse (by us!).....but in the end a less humane and conventional method was perceived as necessary. (You do the math. Just say, not poison). 24 hours later little baby mice started bumbling around their house. Obviously their mum had fallen victim and these young had, at just the right moment, left the nest. One little boy succumbed to over-enthusiastic tea-towel capture. But now two perfect, perfect, exciting little baby wild mice are sitting in a quarantine tank in our study. We estimate they are between three and four weeks old and we've seen one take a nibble of food (peanut butter, of course) so we have our fingers crossed they are going to make it. We're guessing that without Mum to give them a drink they've been forced to wander around rather earlier than they would have otherwise chosen. We don't know yet if we've got boys or girls and quite frankly, examination is going to be difficult. We are glued to the tank like Mouse Television. These are Mus musculus in all their glory; nimble, sharp, slope-nosed, big-eyed and wary. It's like watching tiny tigers after caring for a domestic cat. OK. Perhaps that is a bit extreme but for a mouse enthusiast it's just fascinating. The triplets are long gone to bed and I am just sitting here waiting for our two exotic new arrivals to make an appearance. PS Obviously the whole neighbourhood thinks we're mad......
|
|
|
Post by anielka on Aug 7, 2013 1:28:45 GMT 10
|
|
|
Post by andy on Aug 7, 2013 6:50:03 GMT 10
How exciting Anielka are you planning on keeping the babies?
|
|
|
Post by anielka on Aug 7, 2013 16:22:43 GMT 10
Yes if we can provide a good, natural home for them and tame them a little bit. (No if they seem unhappy and too "caged"). The obvious Mousery is the 1.25 m cage set-up. We kept a mixture of half-wild females and fancy mice in there a year or so ago. If we have a boy wild mouse we would love to cross him with one of our in-bred but cancer-free lines to keep our genetic quotient as diverse as possible. There's no saying this will happen again but of the six or so episodes of pet-shop mouse purchases we have had, all but two have had mammarian cancer and it is these two lines we keep going. Last time we had an accidental wild-fancy mating no cancer genes popped up. The wildness went in two generations (really bizarrely: I wasn't expecting it to be so quick- the F1 half-wild looked and behaved really wild but the F2 were as docile as any mouse I've seen in WA). Of course we had one rogue F2. Midnight was a tiny black quarter-wild mouse who escaped and took up residence in the house. To start with we tried to catch him and then.....after a while we just accepted that he lived a semi-free existence in the lounge room returning to cage and friends when we got round to picking him up or he fancied it. He did finally liberate himself outside the house. He had the speed of a wild mouse and could get "worked up" like wild mice (they seem to secrete a great deal of adrenalin when panicked and behave like flea-stage babies). Anyway, watch this space. Our whole family spends the whole time glued to the tank. The neighbours ask after the mice and are becoming desensitised to the idea of mice as vermin and Matt From The Bottle Shop is so interested he is thinking of re-opening a rodentry. the videos didn't come through. Here are the links: s728.photobucket.com/user/anielka/media/72862A18-ABCF-4172-815C-CF399E60DBE0-1656-000001707AC70952_zps9f97e4fb.mp4.htmls728.photobucket.com/user/anielka/media/1BBD1EA5-0B37-4460-B78F-A27F4092192F-1628-0000016B8D850A17_zpsb9f1baa8.mp4.htmls728.photobucket.com/user/anielka/media/247AE9AE-3BBC-4DD1-B2A0-5145B7784491-1582-00000169A7487190_zps7c2f9a45.mp4.html
|
|
|
Post by Blaci136 on Aug 24, 2013 2:56:11 GMT 10
Ooooooh, they are just too adorable. It's interesting to see how the wild mice and our "fancy" mice's behaviour differentiates. I remember from a few years ago I had a family of wild mice living in my oven and the wall behind it (mainly in the oven) and I used to watch the three babies tear around the lougeroom at night, including up onto the back of the lounge and across me! I was amazed at how fearless they were. I'm very interested in how you get on with these little ones.
|
|