I've been meaning to sit down and write something profound and learned for a diary entry; impress you with my erudition, insight and sensitivity.
But it's just not happening. I'm a mom with kids at Christmas. So, in the spirit of the season, and without any profudity at all, I'll share with you a family story written down a couple of years ago. All the events are true. It has absolutely nothing to do with politics or policy, red or blue, Democrat or Republican.
Late last year my five year old son asked for a juice box. We went to the back porch where our three cats were eating their daily ration of canned cat food and there, sitting right next to the storage shelves, was a very small white mouse -- alive, uninjured, but scared stiff.
One of our cats, Stray Cat Strut, is a mouser. I assumed Strut had caught the mouse but canned cat food held more immediate interest, and he would finish "playing" with his toy after his meal. But I found it odd that this little non-wild mouse was unmarked, unlike the common field mice we generally found dead in the middle of the living room.
My son -- deep into Dr. Seuss at the time -- proclaimed "It's a Mouse! For our House!" There went the plan to let Strut enjoy his toy. We scooped up the mouse and popped it into a plastic jar with breathing holes. Lunch the Mouse had arrived.
The next day I went to PetsMart and $40 later we had supplies for Lunch. He lived quite happily in his little cage for a couple of weeks, but then he started scratching at his ears... and scratching and scratching and scratching.
I called our vet, who has cared for my cats for many years. Although she had no expertise in mice, she charged $5 to look at the mouse, gave me some ointment for his now-shredded ears, and got a good laugh out of the stray black cat bringing home a stray white mouse.
Lunch continued to scratch at his ears. The vet gave me an ear-mite solution to drop on his head in case that was the problem. But, when I dropped the mite-solution on his head, it just rolled right off. OK. I soaked a Q-tip in the solution, I got a firm grip on the mouse, rubbed his head... and killed him. Guess I gripped a little too hard. I quietly tucked Lunch back into his favorite hidey-hole and took my sons to a movie. On the way home we broke the news that Lunch had "died" (I have yet to tell them that Mom killed Lunch). He now rests under the lilac bush.
My sons wanted another mouse. I felt horrendously guilty for killing Lunch.
We went to PetsMart and for $50 bought a bigger, fancier cage, then went to the Dumb Friends League and adopted two pretty beige brothers: Breakfast and Dinner (having learned that mice need companionship. You can learn a lot on the Internet). Dinner was a huge, healthy male; Breakfast half the size.
Two or three days later, my husband came into the study saying "Look what I just took away from Strut. I think Breakfast got out."
Nope. It was another white mouse. I plopped it into the small, now-spare cage, and it was christened Lunch II. The plan was to keep Lunch II in the spare cage until we could determine (1) its gender, and (2) whether it had mites.
Well, no mites... but Lunch II was a girl. And when she went into heat the first time boy howdy - it's amazing how small a crack a horny, lonely mouse can squeeze through. She wanted those boy mice desperately.
I put Lunch II out of scent of the boy mice, loaded my sons into a car, and went to PetsMart. $50 later we had another large cage, and Dessert, a fuzzy-haired white companion for Lunch. Now the cages were escape-proof. The cats loved having live theater. Life was good.
Then Breakfast got sick, faded away, died. Now Dinner was lonely and I started to think about breeding Dinner and Dessert (having learned that male mice generally will not accept an unrelated male mouse, but will accept their own sons and brothers.... You can learn a lot on the Internet).
Luckily I held off, because last summer Strut brought home another very tiny, uninjured white mouse. We plopped it into the spare cage and, since it was just a morsel, named it Snack -- and Snack turned out to be male.
I really wanted to be able to combine the two males into one cage, so back to the Internet, where I learned that if I (1) exchanged the litter from the cages to get the males used to each others scents, while (2) putting their cages side by side, (3) thoroughly soaked and scrubbed the common cage to eliminate any Dinner-mouse smell, (4) anointed each mouse's genitals with vanilla, (5) installed a second sleeping-perch in the cage, and (6) kept a close watch during the first few hours, I had about a 10% chance of the males cohabitating peacefully.
Back to PetsMart. $20 later I had a giant bottle of pet-smell eliminator to soak the cage and an additional sleeping perch.
Have you ever tried to put vanilla on a mouse's privates? It's as bad as rubbing mite solution onto a mouse's head. But, at least I didn't kill either of them.
And they didn't kill each other. Dinner and Snack are happily ensconced in the same cage.
A few weeks ago Stray Cat Strut came into the house and dropped something which moved under the dining room table. It wasn't white, so I figured it was a battered field mouse and I went to get a paper towel to dispose of it. Like wolves and dogs, field mice and "fancy" mice are genetically different. Field mice will bite if you pick them up bare-handed. You can learn a lot on the Internet.
I went to where Strut was sitting, watching something, and there was...
NOT a little white mouse.
It was a little BLACK mouse. Very tame.
Midnight Snack is now installed in the spare cage. He's old enough to know that he's a boy mouse (you can tell the gender of mice definitely by about 4 weeks of age. Girl parts are closer together; boy parts descend. You can learn a lot on the internet). We need to make sure he doesn't have mites. Then....
Wish me luck with the vanilla.