The Story of the Mouse

We were off to Bellvue for a friend's concert, and the day, while slightly breezy, was nice enough; sunny, fairly warm, and if you count the fact that there was good music playing (if a bit loud for my ears), it was a near-perfect day.

We were outside a small coffee shop, called the Bellvue Bean. Sparky's band was playing outside on the lawn behind the shop. There was a gravel parking lot in front, but not nearly big enough to fit all the cars. As the band started playing, I wandered down to the parking lot where Harry (my brother), Corrine and Melissa (friends) were. Now, I must mention, I have eagle eyes, if I do say so myself, and am always able to notice nails or baubles lying on the ground. Why does that fact matter? Well, as I was walking over to Harry, Corrine and Melissa, who where chatting amongst themselves, I spotted something on the gravely ground.

You'd think a tiny, grey-furred, baby mouse would be hard enough to see in a field of tiny, grey-colored, rocks. As I said before, I have eagle eyes. Once I saw the mouse I froze, watching. Was it moving? Yes! The mouse let out a small, high-pitched squeak, calling for it's mother, and moved it's head a bit. I made a quick decision, and grabbed up the baby mouse, yelling something to Harry and the rest. They rushed over, cooing and awwwwing over the mouse. I closed my hand over it, rushing over to where my mom, my dad, Corrine and Melissa's mom, and our friend Dan were. My mom picked up the mouse and took it over to where I found it, putting it out near a bush near where the mouse was first found, where we guessed the mother might have come from. We had attracted a small crowd, but most where rather uninterested and moved on, while me and the Saxophone player's (sorry, forgot the name) daughter kept watch. She mentioned something about a snake she saw earlier... yeesh. As the minutes dragged on, the wind got stronger, and the clouds started to move in. The band was just done playing as the first few drops of rain fell, thunder rumbling off in the distance, like some scene from a movie.

A movie about baby mice and blues bands.

After much tension and many ifs and buts and what ifs, we decided to take the mouse home. We weren't sure before whether it would be better to hope the mother mouse would come or to take the baby mouse home, but the rain was the last straw, and my mom scooped up the mouse in her hands (which where much warmer then mine), and we walked over to the car, a couple blocks away. The rain really started up by the time we got to the car, Corrine deciding to ride home with us, living close enough to us for it to be possible. This wasn't the first time we had raised baby animals, the first being the two Squirrels we had accidentally separated from their mother. Kitten milk replacer, we knew from previous experience, was the thing to feed to the mouse.

Problem number one: we didn't have any kitten milk replacer. So we had to make a stop to Poudre Pet and Feed Supply. Problem number two: Poudre Pet and Feed Supply was closed. Cursing and worrying, we drove over to Petco, 5 or 10 minutes away, to pick up the kitten milk. It was expensive, and we had to buy way too much then a mouse would need, but we bought it anyway, having no choice. Unfortunately, the other thing we would need to feed the mouse would be a teeny-tiny eyedropper, and neither us nor Petco had anything like that. But we could visit multiple stores before we found anything the right size, and still might come up empty-handed, and the mouse needed food now, and he hadn't gotten anything to eat in at least an hour, maybe longer. We rushed home, but before the mouse could be fed, we needed to get something to feed him with.

But, thanks to our previous animal-raising adventures, we had just the thing, a syringe; with a curved neck and small enough mouth for the mouse to nurse on (it was originally used to feed a chicken with Wryneck vitamin water). Disaster averted, we warmed up the milk and attempted to feed the mouse. Melissa had come over, and after the feeding was over, we walked her and Corrine back to their house, a block away, promising to let them know how the mouse was doing every so often.

Of course, I didn't forget to take pictures:














Here he is the first day we found him, eyes closed but furred.

















And a here he is a little while later, a bit bigger and getting better at drinking from the bottle.


Life continued as normal, if you don't count the every 1-2 hour feedings, and the slight worry that the mouse wouldn't live.

But, against all odds, he stayed alive, and kept growing, and about 4 days after we got him, his eyes opened, and he began to be more and more independent.

















He started eating solid food more and more, and he stopped wanting to drink milk. He weened faster then we expected. Soon he was nipping at us when we tried to pick him up. He was clearly a wild mouse, and if you think that pet mice and wild mice aren't much different behavior-wise, you're very wrong. Even mice have been domesticated and bred to be calmer.

Soon, it was time to let him go, and while our cat might pay more attention to the kitten milk rather then the mouse while inside, she might go for him outside, so releasing the mouse in our yard was not an option.

After much delay, we decided one evening to take the mouse out to Redwing preserve, a small, marshy, wilderness area a little less then a mile away from our house. Camera in hand and gloves on hands (he bites pretty hard), we set out, with the mouse in a small cardboard box, and searched around for the best place, where the mouse might have a fairly good chance of surviving.

Finding a nice spot underneath a short tree, with some brambly bushes around the base and long grasses providing more then enough cover, we opened the box, waiting to see what the mouse decided to do. At first he was hesitant, staying inside, but as soon as my dad picked him up and held him over the bushes, he leapt off of my dad's hand, into the bushes, and he disappeared in an instant, grey-brown fur perfect for blending in with the grass. We scattered some a mixture of sunflower seeds, cracked corn and oats around, in case he had a hard time finding food at first. It was bittersweet, seeing him go, but he would have let himself out soon enough if we hadn't set him free -- he had been chewing small holes in his box. Sure, he was just a mouse, one of millions. But, to think you saved a creature, who was almost surely bound to die, and gave it free food, a better place to live, and a new chance at life...

It makes it worth it.