More Mousecapades

I got home from work yesterday and couldn’t find Frankie anywhere! I figured he must have escaped from the aquarium and then carefully replaced the weighted lid on top of it.

“What a smart mouse,” I thought to myself, “And tidy too.”

I opened up the aquarium to remove the humane trap from it, and discovered it was unbearably hot in the aquarium. The food I had put out for him in the morning had rotted already because of the steamy conditions. I began to think maybe it was best that Frankie had escaped, otherwise he might have suffocated or roasted in there.

But then I saw a flicker of movement! Frankie was back in the humane trap!

And then everything became crystal-clear to me. Suddenly I knew what I had to do. It was inhumane to keep Frankie in a hot aquarium, and inhumane to keep him in a humane trap. It was a lovely warm evening in Ottawa, unusually warm for January, with several warm days forecast. My blogger friends were right – the humane thing to do was to free Frankie. He could survive outside for a couple of days in the above-zero temperatures while searching out alternative accommodations.

Frankie and Sam the dog and I went out to the park across the street. I opened up the trap and Frankie hopped out. He ran through the footprints in the snow, and each footprint began to look like mountains and valleys as he scaled one side and slid down the other. He followed the footprints all the way home. Then I discreetly averted my eyes so I wouldn’t see if he snuck back in.

Here are a few interesting facts about mice:

• They prefer chocolate to cheese
• The average lifespan is about 3 months
• Unlike the teeth of other mammals, the front incisors of rodents never stop growing. In fact, continuously growing front teeth is a trait shared by all rodents from the tiniest mouse to the largest capybara. By observing captive mice and rats who have nothing to gnaw upon, its been found that these incisors can grow up to five inches per year.
• A mouse can jump down 12 feet without injury. What’s more, mice have a 12 inch vertical jump.
• To this day some people believe that fried mice or mouse pie is a cure for bedwetting!
• The female mouse ovulates every other day
• A pair of mice can have 135+ children in a year! During that time, their children can also start multiplying in similar numbers! Because of the rapid breeding capabilities, scientists are able to study heredity patterns of several generations in only a few years. It would take hundreds of years to study as many generations of people.
• Mice do not need any water; they can convert solid food into water through a chemical process.