Three [escape artist] mice

We have three new mice here on the Unfarm. Recently my two previous mice, Evangeline and Francine, passed away and the mouse cage sat empty with a vacancy sign out front that must have attracted the attention of three new mice who I have named Hermione, Ingrid, and Josephine. (I have been going through the alphabet with mouse names and have already had an Angela, Bernadette, Caroline, Daphne, Evangeline, Francine and Gemima so H, I, and J were up next.)  In addition, as the mice are small and relatively unobtrusive it no longer really phases my parents when I show up with three new ones. Thus Hermione, Ingrid, and Josephine came to live on the Unfarm with very little fuss involved. I suspect that had I also brought home a hamster in addition to the three mice there would have been a bit more uproar so I wisely refrained. Besides, the mice were most likely going to end up as dinner for some snake so I really am in the business of saving lives here. 

Josephine appears to be the oldest of the three as she is the largest. Hermione and Ingrid are likely much younger and upon settling them into their new home I quickly discovered a problem with this: they are so little that they easily fit through the bars of the mouse cage. I checked up on them a few minutes after getting them settled and found only Hermione and Josephine in the cage; Ingrid was running around the outside of the cage. Fortunately I quickly caught her before she could escape into the rest of the house. Unfortunately, all three of my various mouse cages have bars with the same amount of spacing between them so the only way to fix the problem is to set the cage up high on a rolling cart and hope that the height and lack of anything to use to climb down to the ground will deter them from getting lost should they decide to escape. Well, that and to feed them well and hope that they grow fast and soon are unable to squeeze themselves through the bars any longer.

I am, by nature, a bit paranoid and overly anxious so I do check on the mice and do a head count several times a day to make sure that no one has escaped and up until a few days ago the combination of the height of the cage off the ground and the fact that there is really nothing exciting outside the cage (no castle house, no wheel, no food or water bowls) seemed to keep them safely inside the cage. A few days ago, though, I did my morning head count only to discover that one mouse was missing. But she was nowhere to be found on the outside of the cage or the top of the cart so surely I must have miscounted. Nope. There were definitely only two mice in the cage. Becoming frantic I began looking around the room in frustration as there are probably a million places a small mouse could hide and I had no idea where to start. Before I could go into a full blown panic I noticed some mouse droppings on my tabletop easel on the second shelf of the rolling cart. Further investigation revealed a rather frightened looking Hermione crouched on top of the easel. How she got down there I will probably never know. It's not like there were a bunch of tiny mouse sized sheets all tied together and thrown out of the cage dangling down to the second shelf. I retrieved her and placed her back in the safety of the cage (we have cats, after all, who would probably love to catch one of the mice outside the cage.)

Since her misadventure, none of the mice have ventured outside the cage (at least not to my knowledge). Hermione did pop her head outside the cage bars last night but when I peered at her and said, "where do you think you're going?" she pulled her head back in and went about her mousy business. I am hoping that they soon grow too big to get through the bars, much like Josephine, and I can stop worrying so much about them. Until then I plan to continue my head counts and abundant feeding schedule. 

Josephine

Hermione, the escape artist

Ingrid, our original escape artist

Crazy is as crazy does

Molly is the newest canine addition to our Unfarm family. Our reasoning for getting her was as follows: Scout needed a playmate closer to his own age. Axel likes the companionship of other dogs, but has - we quickly learned - absolutely no interest in playing with an overactive upstart of a puppy. Enter Molly, stage right.  She is a small, ten pound cocker spaniel and chihuahua mix with soft, short, caramel brown fur and brown eyes. She is cute, certainly, and sweet, definitely, but she is also - unfortunately - a tad bit crazy.

The shy, five month old puppy we thought we were adopting turned out to be closer to eighteen months old and "shy" is an understatement. She is scared. Terrified, actually. Petrified, even. At least fifty percent of the time. And what here on the Unfarm could be so scary? Oh, lots of stuff including, but not limited to: bike racks, floor vents, doorways, sewer drain covers, metal plates in the sidewalk, storm drains, changes in the color of the sidewalk, people (outside the family), other dogs, pet stores, slippery floors, dog bowl platforms, and dog bowls themselves (but only certain ones.)

And how did we end up with such a "special" little thing? We adopted her from a local rescue who got her from a shelter in southern California where she was picked up as a stray which means we have no history on her: no clue how her formative months were spent, or how long she was on the streets, or how she ended up there in the first place. We have nothing to go on and are left to try and undo months of deep seated issues.

She is nothing if not neurotic, which is probably why she fits in so well here. Half of us are crazy (Scout is a puppy, and by definition that makes him crazy) or special needs (we've got a duck with a limp and a chicken with a permanent broken toe - rest assured, neither issue causes the birds any pain) so the addition of Molly just adds more character to the Unfarm.

It's not all bad, though. She loves Scout and plays with him daily and worships the ground Axel walks on and will spend half of her walks jumping up to give Axel kisses (which he mostly rejects.) She also loves beds and sleeps all night with Mom and Dad on theirs with them, then spends Dad's working weeks sleeping all day with him. She is, to quote Dad, "a good little sleeper" and has taken over Maia's duties of keeping Dad company while he sleeps. Molly also, inexplicably, loves the beach. I thought for sure she would be terrified of the sand or the water or the noise or the people or everything combined but by some miracle she wasn't. She happily followed Scout, Axel and I into the water and splashed about in the waves, getting soaked in the process.

So how to increase the good times and decrease the stress and anxiety for Molly? We're going to try getting her on the friends and family plan at the local pharmacy. I think that enough of us are on mood stabilizing drugs that we qualify for getting another prescription for free. Whether or not it will help any remains to be seen but I will keep you posted.