Mouse Tragedy

We had a tragedy today.  One of our baby mice died.

I noticed this afternoon that he was pretty listless, so I took him out and held him.  He's gotten much smaller than his brothers and I was concerned that he was starving, so I put him in a food bowl and held him for a long time.  I finally took him into Deanna's room and we discussed the problem.  I was afraid he was dying, but decided that I would clean up one of the cages we weren't using and put him in his own house alone, away from greedy, bigger brothers.

Deanna held him for a full hour while I prepared a new cage for him.  I filled it with special treats and lovingly set up a wheel and tunnels for him.  Then I took the cage into Deanna's room where we put the little guy and set it up on top of the nursery, the cage where our female mouse (the mother of this guy) lives in Deanna's room.  He was very inquisitive and spent a good bit of time looking over his new home.

This all happened while I was making dinner.  After dinner, I went to check on him and found him dead in his new cage.  I buried him outside, but it really saddened me.  I don't know what happened.  Perhaps he was ill.  Maybe he caught a cold or the heat from the kitchen up near the ceiling, where his other cage sits, was too much for him.  I don't know; he just died.

Daelyn cried.  Deanna moped.  We're all grieving the loss of another of our babies.  We only have 2 left out of a litter of 9.

This isn't exactly the way we wanted to get rid of them.  We would prefer for people to adopt them, not feed them to the dog or kill them off one by one.

They're ALL confused!!

Daelyn:  "Mom, what's for dinner tonight?"
Me:  "Pork loin."
Daelyn:  "Oh, darn."
Me:  "What's wrong?"
Daelyn:  "I just wish you'd cook something other than chicken sometimes."

Later . . .
Deanna:  "What's for dinner?"
Me:  "Pork loin."
Deanna:  "Isn't that from, like, around the crotch area?"
Me:  "Do you mean 'groin'?"

Later still . . .
Don:  "So, we're having chicken crotch for dinner, I see."

And people think THEIR families are weird!