Three Blind Mice
- Jun 4, 2018
- 8 min read
This is a post from a while ago, over a year before I'd moved in with my best friend and started Mae's Rabbitry and Hand-Raising. It was originally posted on another blog, but I thought the story important enough to be shared here.
Tomorrow I will release two little, month old mice into the big, scary world. Tomorrow the next step in their lifelong journey begins. Today I’ll tell you what I know of their story so far.
On April 3rd, my best friend texted me. Her mother had been vacuuming and found 3 mice pups under the lounge. They’d been put in a container and left outside, the family unsure what to do with them. The mother was nowhere to be found, and was assumed killed by the rat poison spread around the house. My friend promised me that as soon as she got home, she’d check to see if they were still alive and then give me a ring.
I’d been ready for an early night, but around 9pm I got in a car and raced the half hour drive to my friend’s house to rescue three blind mice. It was barely a few days into Autumn, but the night held a sharp nip, and the wind added an icy edge. It was dark, and as I moved towards the box on the back patio, cracked open to allow some breathing air to penetrate, I had to shoo a prowling cat from beneath my feet. It stalked off into the night, missing out on an easy dinner of the three mice.
My friend came out, and for a long moment we admired the mice. I love all animals, but I’ve never been a fan of mice. Rats; love them. They’re full of character and incredibly smart. Mice are like the tiny looking versions with a bad attitude in my mind. And they stink. They always stink. I believe my friend held little respect for the creatures before that moment too, but as we stared down at the tiny, shivering creatures, our hearts melted.
I knew that moment I couldn’t let them just slowly waste away. They had no mouse mother, but they’d have me, and I’d give them the best second chance I could.
My first concern was getting them warm. I put them in one of those plastic take-away containers, the lid off (they weren't going anywhere at this stage). It was padded with toilet paper and tissues, and I sat in the car sweating with the heater on full pelt for the sake of keeping the three little creatures beside me snug and warm. My second concern was feeding them. A very rushed search told me that they were lactose intolerant, and I struggled to know where to find food for mice at 10pm at night.
I stopped by the 777 Pharmacy on the way home, and found a lactose free baby formula (not sure why I didn’t just use my own milk for that one night, considering I drink lactose free milk). I got halfway up the road and realised I lacked a few more essentials. So I went on a wild goose chase prompted by Siri in search of a pharmacy. I ended up in a darkened industrial street with no pharmacy in sight. Eventually, I drove passed a pharmacy that happened to be shut at 11pm on my way home (I snuck in at 10:50pm, just making closing time). I grabbed some of the smallest syringes I could find and a heat pack.
Then began my struggle.
Every two hours, all through the night, I fed them. The syringes were so big in comparison to their tiny little mouths that I started by dripping the formula onto their nose and waiting for them to wipe it off. That lasted the night, but I was scared they’d drown in the droplets if they breathed in too much liquid. The next morning, I went shopping again. This time, I bought a mouse set up (cage, food bowl, water bottle, little tunnels that wove in and out of the cage, a house and a ramp), a paint brush, and some goats milk.
I’d read on many websites that goats milk was used to raise baby mice. The paintbrush also seemed to be a popular choice instead of the syringe, as the tip was small enough to fit in their mouths. Yet it took them a while to learn to suckle. I was amazed the first time one did, and soon I had all of them suckling from the end of my paint brush dipped in milk. I continued my pattern, every two hours waking to heat up their heat pack and feed them.
At first, they wouldn’t poo. I panicked, thinking I wasn’t stimulating them to go to the toilet right. I was reassured that despite their eyes being unopened, they should be old enough to go themselves, but I still worried. It was with great excitement that I saw my first tiny, light coloured poo. I’ve never been so excited to clean up faeces before. Yet that was the first sign of problems. One of the mice was passing the most painful looking faeces I’ve ever seen. It was long and rock hard and very sharp. I wasn’t even sure what it was, but eventually I managed to pull it free gently. Somehow, I didn’t lose them in that first night, and the days after that.
Then on Wednesday the 5th, the microwave died. Suddenly my heat pack became useless and I was resorted to warming the milk over the stove (I will never understand the purpose behind electric stoves, they take so long to warm up even slightly, and cannot be turned down once warm). I’d planned on going to my grandmothers to help with her garage sale after class on Thursday, but suddenly multiple factors aligned and I ended up in Bunbury Wednesday night despite a big day and very little sleep.
I ended up helping my grandmother (who was a little sick, and my Pop had been called to work), feeding mice every two hours, babysitting, and running a garage sale. At first the lack of sleep suited me. I hadn’t slept so well for months, which surprised me. Despite the less sleep, what sleep I did get was much better quality. Yet over time the less sleep hit me and I found myself exhausted every time my alarm sounded beside me. I’m very glad I had my assignment ready early that week.
During that first week, many things happened. One mouse started to grow more active than the others. She got named Jet. One mouse seemed overly sweet and cuddling, and he (originally believed to be female) was named Frillia. The third became Beetroot, as was a balance between her two sibling’s personalities.
While at Grandma’s, Frillia became very ill. He had been the one with the weird faeces, and now He started struggling. He was pooing and peeing blood, more blood than I thought possible. He continued his weird, hardened and elongated bowel movements, and they seemed to never stop. When they finally did, the blood continued anyway. I changed the paper every two hours, and two hours later they were completely soaked with blood again. I thought for sure I was going to lose him.
Then the blood began to lessen, and he began to get his energy back. He was skinny and malnourished, but he suddenly went from looking like a sickened, dying little creature to a skinny but energetic baby mouse. I was amazed. When I’d first taken these three guys home, I’d been expecting to lose all of them in the night. Everyone warned me not to grow attached, told me that they’re likely to die and to expect as much. I did. Yet the strength of this sick baby mouse touched me, and I knew I had a fighter on my hands. He wanted to live.
Unfortunately, they soon learnt to walk. Then run. Then came the jumping. Soon I was catching baby mice as they fell over the edge of the container in an attempt to explore or find the paint brush that supplied food. They followed my hands, begging for attention and breakfast. They suddenly transformed from helpless little creatures to tumbling, energetic toddlers. Every two hours I found myself wondering what Mother Nature was thinking when she made animals learn to run and jump before they learnt to open their eyes.
Then a miracle occurred. One of the tiny little mice opened their eyes. And it was Frillia! The tiniest of all decide he wasn’t going to be behind the others in everything, and strove to beat his siblings at something in life. He cracked open his eyes to suckle, and after they’d all had their fill I raced out to my grandmother on the porch to tell her the good news. Not only had he recovered from the convulsions and constant bleeding, he’d excelled in something! I was so proud of my little Frillia.
The night after I returned from Grandma’s, Frillia went downhill again. I knew instantly something was off. You develop a strong bond between even the tiniest of creatures when you put so much time and effort into keeping them alive. My boyfriend stayed the night, helping me during the feeds by warming the hot water bottle (we still had no microwave) and fetching water, while I fed the little ones. Feedings went quicker, giving us an extra fifteen minutes of sleep between feeds. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t save them all.
On April the 10th, very early that Monday morning, little Frillia passed away in his sleep. I’d given up forcing him to eat the feed before. I knew he had finally given up his struggle. Yet despite this, I was happy. Sad and breaking, but happy. He’d survived his initial challenges, and for a short day or two he’d been an energetic baby mouse. He’d survived long enough to see the world. He’s buried now under a tree in a nearby park.
I’ve gone out of order here, but no matter. It was at grandma’s that they first began the transition to solids, from Diavetalax (a fancy milk formula I ended up using), to baby food, to Weetbix and finally on to various solid foods. Now they eat anything I can find for them. I’ve introduced them to the biggest variety I could in the hopes that they’d better find food in the wild. They’ve had fruits and veggies (carrot, apple, celery, pak choy, banana), dog biscuits and treats, rabbit pellets, Vetafarm rat and mouse mix, bits of meat from Mums dinner, and pretty much anything else I could get my hands on.
They’ve come so far. For the last couple of weeks Beetroot and Jet have been dehumanising in the mouse cage I made for them. They act completely wild, but a couple of times they have recognised me. They’ll just freeze, then look up at me, and I’ll be able to hand them some food from my fingers and they’ll grab it and run off. Every other time they move faster than I can see, and are almost always hidden out of sight. That’s what I want, full dehumanisation, and that’s where they’re (hopefully) at now.
The biggest problem tomorrow comes with getting them out. They’re so fast and hard to catch. As babies, they bit me once, I squealed as if in pain (something I do with my rats) and they immediately stopped. They’ve only bitten me once since, when I held food in my hand and they missed the food and got a bit of my finger in a rush to grab it. They let go instantly, and I barely felt it. I’m not sure if they’d bite now, but I hope they would for the sake of survival. Though it’ll make getting them out even harder.
Then I must get them out of the cage and into a smaller container. I’ll figure out the details tomorrow morning. For now, I’m tired and nervous and excited. I’ll release them across the road, where they may make their way to the nearby barn and farm buildings, or back to our house (where a mouse family already exists), or into the true wild with bushes and grass lands. I’ll give them as much food spread throughout the area as possible, and hope for the best.
That’s all I can do; hope. The rest is up to them now.
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