Here is an interesting fact I noticed years ago: nearly everyone has at least one story about baby rodents. Here’s an example from my own past. When I was a kid, my friend got a pet mouse. A female...and it turned out she was pregnant. When tiny pink lima beans appeared in the cage, one of the younger sisters decided to take them out to show her mother. She carefully placed them on a pillow and took off up the stairs. It was a huge house with very long stairs…so as you might imagine, the size of that mouse family was reduced considerably by the time she got where she was going.
Another friend found a nest of baby mice holed up in her desk, of all things. Her young son had a friend over at the time, and the friend excitedly asked if he could take those baby mice home. He thought they were the coolest things ever. “Sure!” my friend said. She was mean like that. She got him a nice box and set it up all cozy, then giggled the whole time he carried his prize so carefully home. Then she waited for the phone to ring.
Another friend had a three-legged gerbil named Stumpy. Stumpy’s mother was dumb even by gerbil standards and built her nest in the wheel. So shortly after giving birth, when she decided to run…well, you can guess what happened. Poor Stumpy ended up catapulted on the other end of the cage where he got stuck in something or other and tragically earned his name.
What are your baby rodent stories?
My husband, Hick, has a baby mouse story. But he ain't talkin'. His boys spilled the beans, when they were 12 and 14. The three guys had gone to the barn one November to work on a project. Hick climbed into his coveralls, which he left hanging on a barn nail. Next thing they knew, Hick was dancing a lively hillbilly jig.
ReplyDelete"You should have seen him! He squealed like a little girl, and yanked off his coveralls. He pointed to the pocket, so we looked in, and found a bunch of baby mice. They didn't even have fur yet. And Dad was scared of them! He made us take them outside. And he still wouldn't put his coveralls back on."
My coworker, a nursing mom, was allowed to bring her newborn to school. We put him in his pack and play in the large walk in closet. Everytime parents came in, they commented about the urine smell. Turned out to be a nest of mice under a shelf. Until we could get the custodian to come down, we blamed her baby boy :) We couldn't dare tell them the preschool had mice!
ReplyDeleteOur dogs poop in the yard, and the PACK RATS are always looking for something INTERESTING to take to their nests. They chose POOP! Much poop was collected and placed in our pump house for our pool. We went away on vacation and were gone for TWO WEEKS. When we got back, Rod went out to clean the pool filters. On the VERY TOP of the filter was a white animal skull. It was a warning to us--"Don't go away again and leave us without poop to collect! THIS MEANS YOU!!"
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, let me saw Ewwwww.
ReplyDeleteHere's my mice story: When my baby sister Bridget was little we found a mouse in our house. He would come out at night and watch Bridget sit on her blanket. Bridget who would laugh and squeal at him.
Donna
My baby mouse story is one that our cat Smeagol caught and chewed it up right in front of me and I could hear the crunch crunch of tiny bones. Blahhhh.
ReplyDeleteMy hubby has a baby rodent story...my father-in-law was an Air Force colonel so my mother-in-law was always hosting teas and fancy parties and stuff. Anyway, she had a luncheon for the officers' wives, all dressy (this was in the '60s) and my hubby, about 10 at the time, wandered in from school with a baby mouse. The mouse had started out in a box, but on the way home it chewed through the box, so by the time he walked into the luncheon, wall-to-wall with fancy dressed ladies, the mouse was sitting on top of the box. It created quite a fiasco. I understand there were women screaming and standing on furniture all over the house. All over a little mouse.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was little we had hamsters, purchased right after I went to the drive-in to see Cinderella. Imagine my horror when Gladys (the mama hamster) ate her first born Gus-Gus! It was the grossest thing ever, and I couldn't stop watching. But I never picked up Gladys after that. Ick.