I Heart Faces Photo Challenge | Pets

If you have children you've probably been through the phase that someone wants a pet mouse/rat/guinea pig as a pet. Louisa has always loved mice - even the wild brown ones rescued from a sorry fate with the cat - and eventually I gave in to the pleas and Fawn and Snow joined our family.

Within the week of the pair coming from the local pet shop we were woken with squeals from a very excited 11 year old. One of the mice had birthed over night - six little squirming naked bodies the size of a jellybean! Oh joy, that was certainly an added bonus I wasn't prepared for! You can imagine how thrilled the kids were about the new additions. For several days the babies were a fascinating nature study until on Day 3, a catastrophe happened. When we came home from school Louisa went to check on her little family....and the babies were gone! But where? The cats were outside, the door had been shut....had they escaped out of the cage? Surely not, they were still helpless jellybeans. Not even any signs of trauma to give a clue as to their whereabouts.  And then the horrible truth dawned on me, and Google confirmed the fact. First time mother mice often eat their young, especially when stressed. How awful is that? To try and explain to the children about the realities of nature....it was a hard day for all of us.

Thankfully since Fawn and Snow were both females, we never had a repeat of mouse breeding dramas, and they had a happy life of love from Louisa (albeit a little provocation from two Burmese cats). Mice don't have long lives but there was plenty of adventure in the ones these two had!