New critter dilemma ....

Yeah, these indoor cats aren't good for helping with the mice! I am sure I've told you this story before but I'll retell it quickly. Ok, so I had the field mice by the dozens and was taking them off one by one in the live trap. One day I was outside and heard a strange squeaking. Later I heard it again and the light bulb suddenly went off...an animal! It was baby mice and I had taken the mama away!! I felt horrible!! Mice or not I didn't want to do that to them. I found them wandering out of the flower bed, looking for mom. :( I was SO glad I didn't step on any! I had a little rice milk that I fed a few with a tiny syringe. I would have kept them but it doesn't seem very socially acceptable to be hand-raising mice so I took them off to the field where I thought I probably left mom and left them too. I filled a sock with rice and warmed it in the microwave to help keep them warm. It was very hard not to go back in the morning to check on them, but I didn't want to find them dead or half eaten either. So, the moral of my story is...??? I guess it's catch that mama before she has them! lol

Paige - Awwwwwwwwwwww!!! How cute! I hadn't heard that story before. That would've been a hard dilemma for me as well.

Now YOU are scaring me! I am hoping my yard mouse is just fat and sassy from all the nuts and seeds it's been finding from my feeders. I am hoping and praying it's NOT a mama-to-be mouse!!!! (Slapping my forehead and ......... sighing..... sheesh!)

Well, well, well ...... look what I TOUCHED today! Yep! I actually reached over after taking this photo and touched this little mouse. (Actually it was a rather large mouse.)

I was standing within inches of it and bent over to take a close up photo. The reason it didn't scurry off is because it is missing it's left eye. So it couldn't see me. If you look closely, you will see the eye slit, but there is no eye bulging out of the eye socket. When I touched the fur on it's back, it jumped and looked at me with it's right eye and took off running. It ran over to the garden bed on the right side of the backyard fence closest to the feeder and I saw another mouse the same size. They both scurried off to a narrow exit at the back right corner of the fence. There is about a 4 inch gap in the fence there. It's the only place other than underneath the gate that anything can get in through the fence area. (Of course, the squirrels can still climb down from the power lines and along the top of the fence.)

Kind of cute isn't it? But I'm hoping I don't see more soon. =:-O My dh will freak if he finds out! LOL! I'm naming him (I hope it's a HIM) Jack ..... like one-eyed Jack the Pirate! LOL!

This message was edited Apr 28, 2007 7:43 PM

Oh, he is cute, poor thing.....if he didn't see you coming...who else will he miss? At least it looks like he's not missing too many meals!

ROTFL! Rox - I thought the same thing. I am surprised a snake hasn't gotten him yet. But he's pretty big and so is the other mouse. I'm going to leave them alone for now. If they start multiplying then I will have to figure out a way to block the fence opening. I don't think they can get in any other way.

My kids have raised mice, gerbils (which I love), hamsters, and guinea pigs, so this mouse is no big deal to me at all.

But get this ..... my dh (who is not aware whatsoever of our little visitors) was out of town for work. He didn't sleep well at the hotel. He said he had a nightmare about rats coming into the hotel room and for some reason our son was there too and said it's okay dad, we have to get some sleep! My dh said there were rats everywhere in his dream. LOL! This was the same day I first saw BOTH mice scurry from the feeder area. I hope it wasn't a premonition my dh had! LOL!

Haha, I think your DH is psychic! Mine would not like them around either.
Maybe she is pregos?
I think it's cool you have a one-eyed mouse, I have a one-eyed goldfish, poor thing...it's a harsh world out there. I'm glad he has some comfort in your yard....at least until DH gets home. lol

I think mice are cute too but I had to stop feeding the birds when I saw one scurrying around the flowerbed under the feeder a couple of years ago. I live in an apartment and being the city kid I am I hung the feeder right outside the front window over the flowerbed. Great times watching a family of cardinals over the years, of course the weeding was ridiculous--uneaten seeds seem to sprout and thrive in the flowerbed:LOL: Then I saw my fuzzy buddy and neighbors mentioned him as well. Just much too close to my front door for my liking so I stopped feeding them. I also noticed several burrows dug along the brick foundations in the back of the flowerbed that I caved in after a few weeks of the non-feeding.
Since then the wooded area near my home has been destroyed for condo's (which I'm happy to say are not selling :LOL:) I hate seeing wooded areas within neighborhoods destroyed.

I did find my rabbit (Rabbit is his actual name) amongst the flower pots on the front walkway after Easter about 4 years ago. He was all palm sized and orange and white with medium floppy ears. Had a day off which ended up costing me about $125 in new rabbit supplies but he's great!

Those cranes would have scared the stuffing out of me:LOL: I've been lucky and haven't had anything like moles or voles but wow, I had never seen the damage the tunnels can do!! I feel for everyone who has that situation to deal with.

Here is a cool website about the field mice or "voles" as they are sometimes called. And below the photo of the vole is a mole. I get BOTH creatures in my yard! LOL!
http://www.voles.com/Vole_FAQ.htm

Apparently the voles have a very short life span. I am not surprised. My one-eyed one also has a short tail. Something must of gotten a hold of it but it managed to get away with a fight. They have so many predators. But according to the article, they don't usually get into houses because they don't climb walls. (whew! good to know that!) Their presence around my area is probably what is bringing the Hawks around. Poor little voles! I'm leaving them for the time being. I saw one again this morning working his way around my garden to get to the feeder area. They will sit there right along with the squirrels in the afternoon and eat the seeds on the ground. It's just too cute! (I know .... I'm a bit warped! lol)

This message was edited Apr 29, 2007 11:36 AM

Nah! You're not warped! My neighbor used to hang a birdfeeder off the branch of a tree across from the parking area and driveway of our apartment building so she could sit outside and watch the action. The "warped" thing she did was slather Crisco up and down the bark near the feeder so the squirrels would slip off. I wish I could have seen if it worked or not:LOL: I liked watching the chipmunks on the ground with the morning doves waddling around with them.

Oh...poor baby! You apparently have good eyes to be able to tell that he was missing one. (I wouldn't have known unless I was down at his eye level) He must not be able to hear very well either if he didn't run until you touched him.

So far I'm still feeding my birds and have not seen any. Maybe the cat (that I thought might be a raccoon) is actually coming over here for dinner and not just to torture my cat in the window?

is that really a mouse? It looks like a rat to me, especially the tail. ??

dmac - LOL about your neighbor and the Crisco! So you get chipmunks? Never seen one, but they sound cute! ;-)

Paige - Took a while for the mice to find me. And there has only been one lately. The other might have been dinner for a predator. Can't tell if it's the one-eyed mouse or the other one.

My dh finally saw it yesterday. Fortunately, he wasn't upset to see a mouse in our yard. He was all excited to tell me about it and was kind of deflated when I told him that I already knew about the mouse and had even gotten close enough that I noticed it had only one eye and a short tail and had touched it. LOL! He's actually starting to observe things more out in the backyard. I think the gardens are actually "growing" on him .... no pun intended! LOL!

Redtootsiepop - I think it is a field mouse. It doesn't have the long nose of a rat. The tail is thicker, but part of it is missing. Probably bit off when trying to escape a predator.