Saturday, August 20, 2011

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!


16 comments:

  1. Family life with pets is so rewarding - but not without it's difficult times too. I try to look on them as learning opportunities but it is hard when they are not old enough to fully understand, but old enought to ask the hard questions!
    Fab photo again too :-)

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  2. i love the photo. You need to scrap that pic
    Juanita =)

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  3. very cute photo!! enjoying all your pics they are fab. poor wee baby mice, and poor mummy mouse.

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  4. This is just too cute!

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  5. What a fun photo! So unique. :-) Mary

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  6. What a great picture. I didn't know that at all about first time mother mice. Hopefully we will never have any mice in our house though. I know my son would love some but they SCARE me. EEEK! Great shot!

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  7. cute...but a creeps me out a little :). Not a big fan of mice, but they are pretty cute.

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  8. What a great picture!!! Pictures that make mice look cute are always GREAT!! I enjoyed your work today!!

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  9. Awww....that's so sweet. What a great pic.

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  10. what a GREAT shot! Love it!

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  11. So cute. I adore their names!

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