Now departing on flight 327

I have, unfortunately, another departure to report. Last night, March 27, we lost Ingrid, the last of our mice. She had been slowing down lately and not eating as much but when I checked on her in the evening I found her uninterested in her dinner and breathing heavily in her little castle. I picked her up and held her while she took her last breaths and tried my best to comfort her and let her know that she wasn't alone as she died. 

She was the least troublesome out of the batch of three mice, including her, Hermione, and Josephine, that I most recently acquired. When I got them they must have been fairly young as they easily (and regularly) slipped through the bars of their cage to scramble about on top of the cage. 

It was because they were able to get through the bars of the cage that we lost - and then found - Josephine when she made it off the top of the cage and disappeared in the house for four days. She was hungry and quite thirsty when we found her but somehow she survived being loose in a house with two dogs and two cats. She was the first to pass away several months after her big adventure. 

Hermione suffered from skin irritation and was on daily medication to help calm her itchiness but even with all her skin problems and frequent trips to the vet she managed to outlive Josephine; she was the second to pass away. 

Ingrid outlasted them all, living to the ripe old age of nearly 3 years, about a year past the average life expectancy of pet mice, who generally live one to two years. Ingrid never went on walkabout throughout the house, and didn't have to visit the vet with any regularity, choosing instead to exercise on her wheel and build elaborate hidey holes in the bedding in her cage instead of getting into trouble. 

We will definitely miss her, as we miss all the animals that have passed through the Unfarm, but we are glad she lived as long as she did and take comfort in the fact that she never ended up as the snake food she was most likely destined to be without us. Have a safe flight, Ingrid.

On ceramic eggs and the intelligence of ducks

Ceramic eggs are in existence to help chicken owners. The eggs are designed to look like real eggs and you simply place them in the location you want your chickens to lay their eggs and they take that as a cue that this is the hot new spot to lay their eggs. I mean, if the other chickens are doing it, why shouldn't they lay their eggs there as well? The ceramic eggs can also be used to discourage chickens who have decided that they should peck at and eat the eggs. Ceramic eggs are much harder to get into, and much less tasty if they do. I haven't heard a great deal about using ceramic eggs with ducks but I figure if it works for the chickens then it's bound to work for the ducks as well. Right? 

Ducks are much smarter than they typically get credit for. When last I cleaned the coop and replaced a bunch of real eggs with ceramic eggs I reasoned that the ducks would assume everything was as they left it that morning and their eggs were still safely ensconced in their nest. Gwen and Gemma, my two outdoor female ducks, did continue to use the nest and did not seem upset over the loss of any eggs (we lost a duck once when she flew away forever after her eggs were removed from her nest) so I assumed that the ceramic eggs had done their job and fooled the ducks. I was wrong. When I cleaned the coop today and went to remove the real eggs I discovered that the girls had been using their nest but every time they laid an actual egg, they would roll a ceramic egg out of the nest to make room for the new egg. By the time I came in to clean the coop the nest was full of real eggs and the ceramic ones were scattered all over the floor of the coop. How they knew the eggs were fakes I am unsure of but realize it they did. This may be why I had not heard much about using fake eggs with ducks. I am, once again, reminded not to underestimate my duck's intelligence. It seems the only one fooled when I do that is me.

The haul for today: 22 duck eggs