Mice With Milk Moustaches

There was a little scribble, once, written and then read aloud… Not to a large audience, with neither admission, nor tents, for there were only just two for the crowd. 

Annnnd if you will pardon a varying variety of rhymey bits explaining things… (Of which this is not one, you will see what that starts) The story shall be told to you too. Whether you were greatly desiring to hear it or not. And so it begins. With the crowd of two, because it seems like a decent sort of a place to start.

And it went something like this.

You should publish it, said the cousin, at the end of the show. Put it on your blog, said the sister. (For they were the two who were listening) So the scribbler thought it over, and Did Things to it over a long period of time, (the longish spaces between tweakings accounting for the time it took, it did not really change in any great measure from this) until suddenly there was nothing left to do but push one button. The most important button, as everyone knows. The only button that can pull the curtain, and reveal your Scribbling Studio to the public, ever so much like a dollhouse with the front open.

Ahem. That is rather a goodly distance off course though, isn’t it? Allow us to get back on track. Where were we? Oh yes, the scribble! Shall we get on with it, do you suppose? Yes? Well then, off we be gone on it! Erm, almost, anyway. I haven’t finished my preamble yet. One moment whilst I go on with that, if you please ;) 

Ahem.

What were they asking for, what did they hear? Did they really wish THAT to be posted on here? And if so, what is it? Is it big, or quite small? Will it be important, in the slightest, at all?

Well, I can’t say t’will REALLY, though it may be amusing. And will you read it, or not? That’s for YOU to be choosing. 

But if you SHOULD choose to continue with us… I ought to begin it, and so I shall, thus. 

How do you go about Mouse Rescuing missions?

Much in the same way you give a pig a pancake.

And the very first thing you need is a deep hole. This hole being of the variety containing a baby mouse, and preferably be very deep, and difficult to get into, such as one into which people with arms of Customary Circumference cannot reach unaided. Not even the Smallest Of The Company. 

This being the case, you will rig a long stick with a hastily borrowed spoon, taking time to pound the spoon quite flat with a hammer first, bending it carefully in unusual places, in order to make it fit in the hole. This having been done, you must whip out your nearest roll of hockey tape, there being a dearth of duct tape on the place, and firmly attach this to your delimbed stick. (Oh, didn’t I mention you were cutting this stick down? Well, you are. It used to be a Fine Young Upstart of a tree, so there.) 

This all being in readiness, you will return to the Place Of The Hole, and go to fishing around with your spoon-stick. Upon doing so, you discover that if you do not manoeuvre very carefully indeed, you will squash the poor baby mouse you are trying to rescue. 

This will not do at all, so you deftly switch around your handy-dandy stick thingy so that it faces spoon-up, and go to work scooting him to one side so that there is room for the rescue-gadget to land. 

Your plan succeeds beautifully. You fish him up very carefully, telling him not to fall off. No bailing out on the rescue ship. 

It works. You are vastly relieved as you stick him in a box, and cart him off to be showed off to various stray persons who may be interested in such sights. 

After everyone has seen him, you realize he must be hungry. Wouldn’t you be hungry if you fell in a deep hole and got fished up?

Of course you would. This is a very sensible approach to take, especially if you’re in there for who knows how long. 

This leaves the difficulty of how to feed it. It really is an incredibly small mouse. You didn’t know they came in such small packages after their fur grows in. This is a beautiful irrelevancy that you take time for as you ponder and scratch your head on the matter at hand.

This having been a partially successful Sort Of A Thing To Do, you come to the conclusion that a syringe is the most probable article on hand with which to feed such a minuscule little micron of a mousie, and proceed to warm it a very small dish of milk. 

Note the very smallest mouse-kin, and his equally diminutive cup….  And you see about the size of the matter! Except ours was decidedly smaller yet. 

You don your gloves. The mouseling is carefully set in the middle of a very large and soft rag, and you settle comfortably on the rocking chair with your tiny friend. Very cozy. Very cozy indeed. Also incredibly cute, when it comes down to it. But bottlefeeding a mouse with a syringe proves to be no easy task. It’s so small, see, and drops of milk really are so big in comparison. Bigger than its mouth, almost. You pat its nose carefully with a Q-tip to remove excess and reduce milk-snuffling-up, and proceed until it seems to be full.

And all throughout the process it is being said,“Never thought I’d come to this!” MICE, you people. In the house, voluntarily. We do not even keep cats in our house, so this is rather a very far stretch of the imagination. (And we do not have rusty imaginations a bit) But it IS very, very adorable. His little nose twitches, and you are amazed all over again at how tiny it is. Also have I mentioned that baby mice jump?? And that their squeaks are incredibly shrill??? Well, you know it now, and don’t you forget it! (Kudos to you if you recognize an Odyssey moment when you see one, and can apply all the correct emphasises to this sentence.)

(Think of the Words-That-Come-With-The-Mice as their thought-bubbles ;) 

Having fed it what you assume to be enough, you put it to bed in a small box, with the previously mentioned large and soft rag, set the box into a pail, just in case it can climb, (mouse, not box) and go on looking up information on the care and tending to of mouselings whilst you wait for cookies to bake out in the summer kitchen. The sun has gone to bed, even out in the white nights of the north, when finally you make the trek back to the house.

You go on researching after you crawl into bed, and finally and after much hunting, discover that by this age, being determined by fur and open eyes, they are apparently capable of going an almost the whole night through without having to be fed every few hours. Quite possibly even all the way through.

This is a great relief to you. You have not relished the thought of this at all. Your extra feeders-of-small-mice wish also to sleep, but would have, on account of some sense of responsibility resulting from finding it in the first place, taken their turn if necessary. 

It will not be necessary. Huzzah!!! You go to bed and sleep for a somewhat reasonable length of time. 

Six am dawns. You and your trusty helper warm the milk, and you pull on your gloves to repeat yesterday’s process. (It fits really quite a great lot for such a tiny thinglet, something at which you forget marvel until your assistant points this out.)

If you were relieved to learn that it could sleep comfortably through the night without Human Intervention, you are doubly relieved to learn, further researching later, that open eyes mean a baby mouse is technically old enough to be on its own, and you may turn it loose out of doors with a clear conscience.  Which means that since you have rescued it from the Hole, it now has a chance. Every bit as much as it ever did before it fell in. And you will not have to keep mice in the house for any great number of days, which were seeming longer the more you thought about it. 

And Mousie being set free, you and your newfound knowledge may go on with your day. 

And in the end, after all, you have come out of it with myriads (alright, so they are only medium sized myriads, and not the XL variety, but still) of priceless pictures, and having learned many things you did not previously know about the habits and customs of Diminutive Mice-kins. You might say it was somewhat educational.

And THAT is how you conduct mouse rescuing missions! (Although the rocking chair may be omitted, if there is not one to be had. If you must. The result will still be nearly the same.) 

Ps. To clarify one possibly essential point, as brought up by Lizzie in the comments… Yes, this is a true story. Mostly. In some places the perspective was changed for the sake of the scribble. 

But other than that it is all quite real ;)