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

A loss on the Unfarm

If you are expecting a lighthearted, somewhat humorous report of life on the Unfarm, I am sorry to disappoint - the news today is neither of those things. We have suffered a loss here on the Unfarm yesterday. My little, tiny, baby bunny boy, TJ, went into shock yesterday morning due to a gut upset. (I am quickly coming to face gut problems in rabbits with a knotted stomach and a cold sweat, after having previously lost both Tajha - TJ's mate - and Peter - the Netherland dwarf who lived with us before Jojo and Suki arrived, to gut upsets.) I rushed TJ to the vet where he managed to hang on for most of the day but lost the battle in the early evening and slipped away. All losses of my little ones (we have lost somewhere around twenty pets in my lifetime) are painful but losing TJ was particularly tough because we had become so close in the last few months as I nursed him through a stubborn injury he sustained after a run in with Jojo during an attempt at bonding. TJ and I have been together for at least four years now and he was so tame that I could walk right up to him and pick him up wherever he was - whether inside or out running around the garden. We often cuddled up for naps and he is the only rabbit who I could trust to run free throughout the house as he stayed out of trouble and the dogs seemed to accept him as a sort of honorary dog, knowing somehow that he was not to be chased or otherwise bothered.

The evenings now are the hardest. That is when I miss him the most, during that time when the distractions of the day have begun to melt away and all that is left is an ache and the desire to hold him again, cradling him against my right side with my arm, his feet resting against my hip and his head at shoulder height so that all I needed to do was turn my head to be able to kiss the soft, white fur on his forehead. His departure has left a hole in my life and the rest of the animals on the Unfarm have noticed his vacancy as well.

In a somewhat cruel coincidence, Dora, my sister's hamster, also died yesterday and while Dora was not technically a member of the Unfarm, it is a loss all the same, and deserves to be mentioned to honor her memory.

And now that this loss has been reported, I am signing off. I will try to resume reporting the news from the Unfarm again shortly but I have to be in the right mood and it is not the one I am currently in. Goodnight, all. Love you forever, TJ.