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.

Josephine's big adventure - a short story

I don't know why the cages I have are deemed suitable for mice. All three of my mice can (and do, on a regular basis) get out of their cage by squeezing between the bars of said cage. I have long known about this propensity of my mice to escape the confines of their (cat-proof) housing - hence the placement of their cage on a rolling cart in the center of the room without anything leaning against it or trailing down off of it so as to "strand" the mice on a sort of island in the bunny room from which they cannot escape so that they do not go roaming about the house on their own. This technique has always worked well for me, so long as I do not leave things on top of the cage, apparently. I made this mistake a few weeks ago, leaving a fabric hammock sitting on top of the cage after the mice chewed off all four of the supports that allow it to hang from the ceiling of their cage. I thought nothing of it at the time but came to regret that decision the following morning when I did my customary head count of the residents of the mouse house. 

Coming up one mouse short of the three that are supposed to be in the house, I counted again. And one more time, just to be sure. Unfortunately, repeated counting did not change the fact that one mouse was most assuredly missing. Josephine had somehow gotten out and off of the rolling cart. As the hammock was also off the the cage and now sitting on the floor I can only surmise that Josephine entered the hammock which then fell off the top of the cage onto the floor below, taking Josephine along for the ride. I had not idea how many hours head start she had on me so I began searching for her all over the bunny room: under furniture, in the closet, and behind chairs without success. This was Monday morning. By Thursday evening I had searched the entire upstairs multiple times over, largely ignoring the downstairs as that is a) difficult for her to get to with two flights of stairs between the upper and lower floors, and b) the domain of the cats, where Mynx and Max regularly hang out. Late Thursday evening, however, we noticed that Max was extremely interested in the closet under the stairs, staring at the crack under the door with unusual intensity. Upon opening the closet we found... wait for it.... nothing. I looked on the floor between my art portfolios where Max had been staring and there was no sign of Josephine: no mouse, no mouse poop, no holes chewed in anything. 

I was about the shut the door when I happened to look at the top of my art portfolio and there she was: Josephine - hungry, thirsty, and probably a bit tired but otherwise alive and well. How she made it from the upstairs to down I have no idea. What I wouldn't have given for a tiny little GoPro mounted on her head to see what exactly she had been up to these last four days. Alas, we will probably never know. I had hopes that Josephine would learn a valuable lesson about the safety and comfort afforded her by a life behind bars, so to speak, but it appears she did not. She was out of the cage again just last night. This time, however, I did not leave anything on top of the cage that could fall off. At least one of us learned our lesson.

Josephine, alive and well, against all odds

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

Thrill ride

Not all mice like those little clear plastic balls that let them roam around the house without danger of them squeezing into some little hole somewhere and reappearing months later with a whole passel of babies in tow courtesy of some local wild mouse. 

Francine, for example, does not like said ball and when placed inside one she simply sits in one place and refuses to move. Evangeline, on the other hand, loves her rolly ball; put her in it and she happily rolls out of the bunny room, down the hall, around the living room and into the dining room. She even hangs out in the kitchen when we're baking, preferring to be where the action is. 

A recent development may have changed her mind about the ball, though. She was rolling down the hall while my brother was throwing toys down the hall for Scout to run and fetch and during one such trip down the hall Scout's foot nicked the side of the ball and sent it spinning. All poor little Evangeline could do was hold on for dear life as the ball spun across the hall. From my position in on the living room couch I could only watch helplessly as Evangeline went from right side up to upside down to right side up to upside down to right side up again when the ball finally stopped moving as it ran into the wall. I ran down the hallway and scooped up the ball and opened the lid to allow a grateful Evangeline to crawl out onto my hand. 

I have yet to try putting her back into the ball and am worried that when I do she will simply sit there in terror like Francine tends to do. Then the only option the mice will have for exercise is time on their jungle gym (aka me.) And as much as I don't mind having mice crawl around on my neck and shoulders I do mind the deposits they leave behind. I have made some tiny outfits for the mice in the past. Just small things (as if all mouse clothes aren't small!) like Santa hats, reindeer antlers and tutus but maybe it's time to consider making mouse diapers...

Evangeline sporting her reindeer antlers

Cuddle time

Most of the animals here on the Unfarm are fairly self sufficient when it comes to going to sleep. The chickens put themselves away in their coop each night - even Lucy, who has stopped going into the Little Coop at night as abruptly, and mysteriously, as she started it. The ducks start nodding off as almost as soon as they get inside for the night and the mice curl themselves away in their little castle to sleep the day away. The rabbits sleep quite lightly but they do doze several times throughout the day and night. Cats are notorious for being good sleepers and ours are no exception, napping most of the day so that Maximus can spend the whole night upstairs playing while the dogs are out of the way in the bedrooms. And speaking of dogs, Molly and Axel can go to sleep whenever they feel like it - mostly when I am gone from the house and there is nothing else to hold their attention. Scout is another story. 

Scout is many things. He is high energy. He is fast. He is a ball thief at the dog park (because he is fast.) He is playful. And cute. And also really, really annoying when he is sleepy. Apparently he can't just go to sleep like everyone else. He must have someone there with him to cuddle up to. He is insistent. Very insistent. When he gets tired he finds someone and proceeds to make a pest of himself. If I am watching TV in the bunny room, Scout will try to crawl up onto the TV stand. Or my desk. Via my chair. If you are working at the dining room table he will try to crawl up onto the table, pushing your laptop out of the way until you give in and sit with him. On occasion, Scout has even tried to crawl onto me, putting his paws up on my shoulders and crawling into my lap. 

There is little else you can do but go and sit with him. And sometimes that is not even enough. In his quest to get close to you he will often sit not just next to you but actually on you. I got a text message the other day that said "look at your dog." Going out into the living room I found my brother on the couch with a 50 pound Scout sitting on his chest. If you are lying down he will try to sit on your head. 

This annoying behavior has been given the innocuous name of "cuddle time" and someone always draws the short straw and has to cuddle with Scout. If you choose not to you have to go into a room and close the door behind you, then listen to Scout as he scratches up the other side of the door trying to get in. Each scratch on the door is another one of your nerves being shredded until you just can't stand it anymore and you give in. Probably not the best way of dealing with him but the only way we have discovered so far. We keep wondering if perhaps he will outgrow this puppy-like behavior but at two and a half years old it isn't looking good as of yet.

The mice of the Unfarm: a recap, and whether or not decorating is my calling

We have had several mice here on the Unfarm going, in chronological order, from Bernadette to Caroline, then Daphne, and then Evangeline, Francine, Gemima, and (since it was bugging me that I had missed the "a") Angela. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that Gemima appeared to be losing weight so I made an appointment with the vet for her. It was quite timely because the morning of the vet appointment Gemima was sitting in her cage, hunched and moving very little with a discharge coming from her nose. I had her in the backseat of the car and was ready to leave for the vet's office when I got a phone call from them. An emergency case had just come in and the vet had rushed into emergency surgery with a ferret with a life threatening condition and as a result Gemima's appointment got bumped. Now I faced a dilemma: wait it out with Gemima at home and hope she pulled through until the vet could see her or take her in to the vet's office anyway and leave her there for the vet to check once he got out of surgery. I chose the latter. The next morning I got the call that she had unfortunately passed away sometime during the night, probably due to a failure of some sort in some internal organ. So my little quartet became a trio: Angela, Evangeline, and Francine are left still and are, for the most part, doing well. (Evangeline has a bit of a respiratory illness that she is not quite suppressing as well as she should but it is nothing that requires medication as of yet. Fingers crossed that she beats it on her own.)

Switching gears: apparently I am a horrible decorator. As soon as I set a litter box down in the rabbit cages the rabbits start tossing them about, moving them from one side of the cage to the other. Ginger was quite fond of tossing her litter box off the second floor of her cage and scattering her litter, box, and bunny berries all over the floor until I thwarted her by keeping her box on the first floor of her cage. Dog beds and blankets neatly laid out get scrunched and rearranged and dragged down the hallway until the dogs are satisfied with the new arrangement. The chickens and ducks are not much better - the chickens scratch about in their straw convinced that there is invisible food buried somewhere in the coop until they have made a proper mess and Minna is fond of pulling up any loose material around her to create little nests. I am no more successful with the mice. I cleaned their cage the other day and put in more bedding than I usually do - too much, as it turns out. I saw Francine at the cage bars yesterday, busily pushing bedding out of the cage between the bars and onto the table below. Maybe the feng shui was off somehow. Or maybe the cage wasn't "open concept" enough anymore. Or maybe I simply am a horrible decorator.

Arrivals and departures on the Unfarm

As it has been some time since I have posted anything (goodbye, resolutions) there has been some small number of arrivals and departures here on the Unfarm. A change of cast, so to speak.

The first to leave was Daphne, the mouse. This left Caroline (being the other mouse) all alone and precipitated the arrival of Evangeline - a small, grey mouse to keep Caroline company, which would have worked well had Caroline not then died soon afterward, leaving Evangeline alone. It would appear that either my timing is perpetually off when it comes to the mice or my luck is just plain lousy. 

Shortly after Caroline died (and was stored in the freezer beside Daphne until they could be taken to be cremated - a fact which my mom forgot until she went rummaging around in the back of the freezer for cheese and was startled (to say the least) by a frozen, Ziploc-ed mouse) Clover, my sweet little rabbit, took a downward turn. It started out with weight loss that had me concerned enough to make a vet appointment but became something closer to panic when he became lethargic one evening a week before his scheduled appointment. I took him into the vet the next morning on an emergency drop off appointment and he remained there on heat lamps throughout the day and went home with me in the evening in less than stable condition, with poor appetite and low body temperature. I was cuddling with him at home that evening when he stretched out and then went limp. Having held enough dying animals (that is a sad statement of my life, is it not?) to know what that meant I pleaded with him not to go but it was useless: he died in my arms. And so we lost Clover - the malnourished stray I had caught in a live trap and nursed back to health six years ago. Perhaps the only positive thing I can say about losing Clover was that at least he was not bonded to any other rabbits that would be left behind; I was in the process of bonding him with Jojo but they were only at the point of tolerating each other when Clover died. 

The benefit to having so many pets is that when you lose one you can't wallow in your misery for long: you have a dozen or so other animals that need you still. Which brings me back to Evangeline, our lone mouse. As it so happens, I was trolling the humane society website (as I often do, looking for some animal or another who seems to desperately need a home like ours) and happened across the profiles of three female mice who were up for adoption. Here was a perfect opportunity to add roommates for Evangeline while supporting a worthy cause. Needless to say Evangeline now has three new mice to socialize with: Angela, Francine, and Gemima.

And so the tally stands at this: departures - 3, arrivals - 4. But knowing life on the Unfarm, those numbers are sure to change again all too soon.

The name of the game: procrastination

Back in the beginning of January I made the resolution to post on here at least twice a month. As it is now mid March you can see how well that resolution has gone. Much has gone on here on the Unfarm since I last posted in (oh, the procrastination, the embarrassment!) November. Here are some of the updates which I hope to be following up with more in depth posts.

An out of sorts sort of year: The whole of 2014 was unusual in that much of what we traditionally do each and every year did not get done. I had planned on taking Axel and Maia camping but my sister couldn't come out here from Colorado during the summer and I know too well Axel's desire to be near me that I feared if I attempted a solo trip I would come out of the campground showers to find him sitting outside the building waiting for me, having left an Axel-sized whole in my tent. In addition to a lack of camping there was a similar lack of berry picking. I don't think we went out once that summer. Usually we visit local farms to pick most of our strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and peaches. In addition, we had a bunch of home improvement projects planned that never got done. Let's hope we can get at least a few of them done this year - if not I think the chances are pretty good that someone is going to fall through the rotting pile of wood that we call a deck (the result of building a deck out of wood in a climate that is nearly perpetually wet.) As it is we have roofing tiles nailed to the deck to keep us from looking like a cartoon character who has stepped on a banana peel, windmilling our arms as our legs slide out from under us on the algae/slime that no amount of scrubbing and washing seems capable of reducing. The year went out with a fizzle as well when we failed to decorate gingerbread houses and bake our usual assortment of cookies and candies to give out to friends and relatives. We did manage to make a batch of fudge, some butter toffee, and rocky road but that's about it. No sugar cookie decorating, no cranberry coconut cookies (they are actually much tastier than they sound), and no chocolate covered cherries. We barely even decorated the tree for Christmas. Let's hope that this year is better than the last one.

Addition, then subtraction, then addition again: No, I didn't take a math course at the local college (child, please!) I bought a pet mouse back in August and named her Bernadette. She was a secret mouse in that Dad knew nothing about her (I figured ignorance was bliss.) Unfortunately she died after about a month (here is where that subtraction comes in) and I decided to get a new mouse (addition) and name her Caroline. In November we finally told Dad about our secret mice. He took it surprisingly well.

Another addition: The Saturday before Christmas we decided that we needed to add another dog as Axel seemed somewhat down since his friend Stella died of cancer recently and we know that Maia probably wouldn't be around much longer having just turned 19 years old and the thought of having only one dog seemed too lonely to bear so we added Scout, an 8 week old pointer mix from the Maui Humane Society. He was adorable which was good for him since puppies are, as everyone knows, rather obnoxious.

A loss: On January 3, 2015 we made the tough decision to put Maia to sleep as she had started whining, unable to get comfortable and her quality of life was diminished. It is never easy to make that decision but we try to do what is best for our little ones and I want to make sure that it is understood that it was not motivated out of a desire to reduce any "hassle" on our part. She got to leave with all of us (except Liz, who had gone back to Colorado already) around her.

A gain: We discovered that Axel likes having a dog to walk with but doesn't really care to actually play with anyone so we decided to add another dog for Scout to play with - enter Molly, an unknown small dog mix who is supposed to be about the same age as Scout (about 4 or 5 months old.) Two puppies at once. Clearly we would be good candidates to enter some sort of in-patient psychiatric facility.

Another loss: In February we lost Sakari, the last of our original three chickens. She was my personal chicken and would have been 11 years old this spring. She got a sort of throat infection and despite treatment she was unable to beat it. We had been hoping she would make it to old age - 11 is actually only middle aged for a chicken. Poor Penny is on her own for now.

And yet another loss: Just a few days ago we lost Basil to a gut upset. I have come to hate gut upsets in rabbits as they have taken several of my little ones now. Basil was an especially sweet little bunny who was the best cuddler of the group and preferred to spend his time out of his cage next to me so that I could pet him the whole time - he would actually demand it if I stopped for more than a minute.