Ghosty Girl is Two Years Old

 

This month, my Ghosty Girl is officially two years old. I mean, technically, I brought her and her sister, Thistle, home two years ago today. So...she was probably two last month but it's not like pet stores give you a birth certificate for the mice you buy. 

Two is not a particularly old age for humans or vehicles or bottles of wine. It is, however, a properly old age for a mouse. Mice are fully matured by about 3-4 months old. Female mice are in a safe pup-bearing age up until about 9 months, after which pregnancies can be dangerous. A typical mouse lives to be about 1.5-2 years depending on genetics. Ethical mouse breeders who breed for health may have mice that live to be 2.5-3 years, but your average pet-store mouse has genetic predispositions towards illnesses. 

This is all to say: today, my darling Ghosty Girl is two years old. Maybe a little older. And for a mouse that's pretty old. 

Mice age quickly. One day they'll be young, the next they'll be matured. One day they'll be an adult in their prime, the next they'll be elderly. And while the same may be said by a person, shocked by how quickly time seems to pass as they age, it will never be as true to a human as is it is to a mouse. 

As you love a little mouse, you see the phases of their lives pass by with an alarming speed. Both Ghost and her sister were so small when I got them. Then, a little less than a year after I them home, I got sick with COVID. It took me out of commission for about two weeks and, during that time, the mice got a pretty basic level of care. They got food and they got clean water, but they didn't get their cage cleaned and they weren't being regularly held. Afterwards, I was surprised to find that, in that time, Thistle had ballooned in size and Ghost, herself, had rounded out quite a bit. A few months later, Thistle shrank back down and quickly passed away. 

Illness in a mouse moves quickly. Tumors grow rapidly. Their sizes shrink. A healthy form can waste away, leaving them hunched and chattering, over the course of a few days. 

Ages moves quickly, too. As they age, their once alert ears seem to slide lower to the sides of their heads, giving them a more prominent dome shape to their heads. Their eyes don't open quite as wide. Their bodies, almost always, shrink with age. They hunch a bit, and a significant hunch might indicate they are in pain. And you think: didn't you just come home with me, a whip-quick whisp of a thing? 

I worry with Ghost living alone. Mice are, after all, social creatures and she hasn't had another mouse friend for several months. When she first came home with me, sharing a box with her sister, I had two other mice--Merlin and Hex--and though they had to be, officially, separated from both, they did have occasional opportunities to interact. I wonder, now, what Ghost thinks. She was separated from her littermates. Merlin passed. Then Hex. Then Thistle. Does she think she is the last mouse in the world? Does she ache for another mouse-companion? 

Has this life she has lived the past two years been a happy one? She's been given cardboard houses to play in and a variety of seeds to eat. She's been held. She's had friends. She's been given bits of bread, unusual cardboard playgrounds, and once a little plastic car to sit in. She's been able to burrow and climb and run on a wheel. She has been healthy. She has been well fed. 

Mice, in captivity, live significantly longer than their wild counterparts. Like most mammals, mice require the care of their mothers to bring them into adolescence. In order to survive in the wild, then, their mothers must first survive long enough to bring them to an age when they might survive on their won. Then, they must continue to survive. To find food. To dodge predators. To keep warm. To avoid injury. It's hard to do. Most sources estimate that mice, in the wild, have a life expectancy of less than a year. Is it a happier year, though? 

Is happiness even relevant to a mouse? 

I like to think it is. I like to think that she has been a happy mouse. That she has enjoyed the past two years she has lived with me. I don't think I could have loved her more, and I don't think I could have cared for her better. 

Anyway, happy birthday to my Ghosty Girl. I feel so lucky to have been the human who has gotten to care for her.