Rodent Surprise

I guess I’m just not cut out for ranching because, after much consideration we’ve decided to get out of the mouse businesses.

It wasn’t just that the cost of mouse feed has gone up, or the problems setting up the tiny corrals.

It wasn’t even the preliminary word from the tax office that mice don’t qualify for an ag exemption. Even the trouble we had recruiting mouse wranglers seemed surmountable.

It was the fact that we woke up one morning and there were six MORE baby mice, doubling our already significant baby mouse count. That brought our grand mouse total to 16 - plus at least one more looked puffy and was complaining about her swollen ankles.

Suddenly I envisioned baby mice pouring out of the bars of the cage in a strange never ending mousey ooze. I immediately loaded everyone up in the car and hightailed it to the pet store, and more than my tires were squealing.

Some people would call that freaking out.

They would be right.

So we’ve traded up. We kept both Mousezilla, who is completely black and therefore likely to be snake food, and Shadow, who was our last acquisition. Everyone else, Sugar, Twitchy, and the dozen mouselets went back to Polly’s for holiday re-distribution.

In place of our 14 head of mice, we received one very adorable dwarf hamster.

Hamsters can live alone. This has already greatly endeared him to me. But it hasn’t been all easy going in our transition to a slightly larger rodent. Jimmy the hamster, named after a beloved cousin, has already required a new glass cage after he escaped our old one by literally PRYING THE BARS APART...

Hopefully we won’t end up changing his name to Hulk Hogan.

Here's the most amusing hamster video I could find. It's been viewed 4 million times. Join the madness.

Life at the Ranch

I think this is a good time to let the good people at the Comal County tax office know that I will be coming in to apply for an ag exemption.

Because we have MORE BABY MICE.

I’m pretty close to losing my affection for these tiny little furry things who are way too family oriented, if you know what I mean. I figured mice in general were a short term pet commitment. I didn’t count on the generational factor.

Our mouse adventure started innocently with just two mice. Then we had the unfortunate cat encounter, which required a replacement mouse, looked a little fat.

A word of advice. If a mouse looks fat, return it to the store immediately.

We ended up with a litter of baby mice. We watched them grow and picked a favorite, then handed off the boys to the store.

About three weeks later the mouse master Sierra noticed Mousezilla was very fat.

“I think she’s pregnant, Mom!”

“No, honey,” I said, confident that we had rid ourselves of all possible papa mice. “There has to be a boy mouse for her to get pregnant and we gave all the boys away.”

“She looks pretty fat to me.”

“Clearly she’s watching too much TV. Let’s get her a gym membership.”

“Moooom!”

A week later I walk in the room having heard some squeaks. Apparently mice squeak when they are in labor, because there were the little pink wiggly things.

“I can’t believe it.” I was stunned and perplexed. Was it a miracle? Or are mice privates just tough to identify?

“More baby mice!” Sierra was overjoyed, both at the idea that there were more mice and that Mom was spectacularly wrong.

So what are we supposed to do? Send all the mice to live in convents? Do I buy a snake and just complete the circle of life? Or do I go with the flow here? We seem to have a bit of a gift for multiplying mice.

That’s it. Mice ranching. I’m not sure how long it takes to qualify for an ag exemption, but I imagine after a few years we’ll have quite a herd going. We could set up elaborate sorting cages, maybe develop a tiny branding program so we can tell everyone apart. Like with nail polish.

Then even Mireya would be part of the round up.

(this may be the only way I'm going to keep my mice from makin' bacon, so to speak)