The Mouse Story:
    The story of my mice at the moment is a bit different than most people.  Most people meet with mice, whether intentionally or otherwise, in one of two ways; first, they may keep pet mice.  Second, they may have wild mice in their house.  Some may even do both.  But I'm the only one that I know of at the moment that has managed (somehow) to combine the two!
    It all started late last fall, when I bought, purely on impulse, two mice; a male fawn marked and a female dove self satin.  Needless to say, they eventually had babies; six of them.
    All good, so far.  The babies grew up a bit, and everybody did fine.  Until somehow; I'm still not entirely sure how; all six babies escaped.  The parents didn't, who knows why not.
    Anyway, the six were loose, and I had a very hard time catching them.  I did catch a few, but not all.  They eventually, as mice do, bred.
    It's been more or less going like that since.  As I'm sitting here at the computer typing this, I'm listening to a mouse, somewhere behind the computer desk.  I have very little chance of catching it!
    I did catch a good number at first; than the problem started to be running out of space for  them.  So I would try different cages.  And ended up having quite a few escapees.
    Right now the population seems to be down; either that, or they're just becoming better at keeping low!
 

 
    Artie is our mouse mascot.  Sort of our "spokesmouse".
    His story is closely tied to the entire Mouse Story.  I'm fairly sure he's a baby of one of the original six; he was born a while ago.
    I found him crawling around my bedroom floor.  He was very little, and his eyes were barely open; he wasn't yet in the "grasshopper" stage that starts within a few days after their eyes open, so I would guess he was about 14-15 days old.  He was rather bedraggled and thin, as well; I guess my bedroom doesn't make the best place to raise healthy baby mice!
    I hand-fed him with kitten replacement milk; he was old enough that he could lap it, which helped enormously.  I mixed it with a small amount of baby bird hand-feeding formula.  To my great suprise, he did beautifully on this; fattening up very quickly and becoming quite chubby!
    At first I thought he was a "plain old" PEW, although his coat was stained a bit yellow, but he's actually turned out to be a very pretty light peachish cream color, with a white head.
    He's by far the tamest of the mice, and enjoys coming out of the cage that he lives in with the other males; he gets along great with the other mice, and in fact is the least prone to gettig into arguments.  He has a very cute personality and even likes to be scratched behind his ears!