Mouse Girl: An Introduction

    Hello! If you clicked over to this blog because you saw the title "Mouse Girl" and thought it would be some story about a girl who, after having been bitten by a radioactive mouse, is able to squeeze into any space where she can fit her head, is able to climb on anything porous, is wildly cute, and has impressive hearing, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I'm just a regular girl who has loved mice for a very long time. Although! I am able to squeeze myself into a pair of jeans before taking them off, throwing them on the floor, and opting into leggings. I am pretty effin' cute. And I am nosy AF so I will try to eavesdrop on anything anyone at work, who has left their office door open, is saying. I don't really climb, though, unless you count climbing the ranks in Super Stylist. 

    This is going to be a blog about a girl, some mice, and an undying affection. I'll take a moment to explain, though, what Super Stylist is in case you are reading this in three years or your preferred phone-games involve less dress up and more enraged aves. Super Stylist is a lot like if you took Kim Kardashian Hollywood and made all of the "jobs" some version of dress up. I have been playing it constantly for the last eight days and TBH will probably need to delete it after another week or two because I lost way too much of my life to KKHW & the pursuit of new outfits for my little avatar. 

    Anyway. Back to mice. 

    I inherited my love of mice from my mother. The story goes, if I remember it correctly, that she was gifted two female mice for her ninth birthday. That same day one of her friends accidentally stepped on one of them, which is very tragic and I kind of want to cry for that mouse and my nine year-old mother just thinking about it. Anyway. Some friend of hers then gave her a male mouse and for the next several years she had so many pet mice because they kept reproducing. 

    When my sibling and I were little, my sibling asked my mom if we could go to the pet store and get a snake. So, she took us, allowing us to find out that the $5 we had between the two of us were insufficient for purchasing a snake. It was enough, though, to buy two mice from the bin and she pitched in to help us out with a cage, a water bottle, some food, and some bedding. Our mice never procreated--most of the mice we had were female and we never had both males and females at the same time--but I still was a proud mouse owner throughout elementary school. 

    I want to talk about them all, or at least I want to talk about many of them, and what it's like to love a mouse. Throughout this series, I'll probably jump around in time, sometimes addressing a specific mouse or sometimes addressing a couple thematically. For now, though, I'll tell you a bit about the tree that currently live with me. 

Sprout

    Sprout is my oldest mouse and, currently, the only female mouse I own. She is a little extra lovey these days because her best friend, Goblin, who she has been with all her life, passed away a couple of months ago. Now she just hangs out with me for companionship. I've had Sprout for about a year and a half now and I have never seen quite so much change in a mouse. As a young mouse, Sprout was very timid. Goblin would leap from the floor of their cage and grab onto the ceiling, crawl across the entire thing, and then drop down, run about, and do it all over again. Comparatively, Sprout would get nervous trying to crawl on top of a box. These days, Sprout crawls across the roof of her cage eighty times a night every night, she jumps fearlessly, and tries to crawl onto my glasses on a bi-weekly basis. When I first got her, she was a nervous girl, and would anxiously chatter at me every time I held her. Now, she practically begs to be taken out of her cage, emerging from her nest each night when I enter the room and reaching her paws towards the top of her cage, beckoning to me. 

    She's changed physically, too. She grew up and grew wide and then thinned back out. She has always had a gorgeous coat of insanely soft, rich, brown fur. Once it was a solid color, though, and these days her back half has a brassy-orange tint to it. Her ears have flattened out a bit, now generally framing her face rather than sitting alert at the top of her head, the way older mice's ears tend to do. 

Merlin

    Next there's Merlin. I've had Merlin for a little over a year, but he was a giant when I got him, so I imagine he was already at least 2 months old. A friend who worked at a pet store gave me Merlin; the store couldn't sell him because he has a funny foot. He is the most enthusiastic, earnest, and genuine mouse I've ever encountered. I bring him offerings of toast, pumpkin seeds, noodles, or potato daily. Whenever I come in the room, he starts putting on something of a show, running frantically from one level of his cage to the other. He will excitedly run in his wheel, and then return to running all around his cage. He'll throw himself onto the bars of his cage and stick his nose out towards me. He isn't terribly interested in coming out, though. It has been more than a year and he still gets too nervous to really be held. He likes people, though, and he always enjoys changes to his environment. He gets so curious about everything. He moves things around aimlessly, he thoroughly inspects every change, and he does it all with a hyper-alert tail flexed in the air. He isn't aggressive, though--the only times he has ever bitten someone he has simply mistaken their finger for a bit of bread. 

Hex

    My youngest mouse is Hex. They are currently about four months old. Someday, I will tell you the entire story of the the confused teenagers working at the Pet Store who insisted Hex was female (we've gone to a vet: they aren't), but for now I'll tell you this: I bought Hex when I was in a state of mourning, having just lost a truly beloved mouse named Marigold. They are goofy and affectionate and, understandably, fond of girls. I have only seen them get aggressive once, after having met Merlin. I have always been nervous of letting Hex and Merlin get too near one another because Merlin is a CHONK and has always lived alone and Hex is considerably younger. So, the times that they have come close to one another, they have been allowed on the same platform. Which is to say: it wasn't Merlin that Hex got aggressive with. It was my hand which they may or may not have mistaken for the mouse it had previously been holding. 

    I've been thinking about this blog and about what I want to tell you with it. I want to introduce you to mice. Kind, affectionate, smart, reclusive, frantic, silly, timid, adventurous mice. I also want to teach you a bit, if I can. I want to tell you a bit about what it's like to love a mouse, to break your heart on their short life-expectancies time and time again, to struggle to find adequate care and resources for them, and to be regularly surprised. Next time, I think, I'll tell you my true mouse-loving origin stories. For now, though, stay cute and don't get eaten.