I bought three baby mice in Mid-May. I have never met a true baby mouse--those fleshy creatures with closed eyes, like a wriggling pile of alien embryo--but pet stores sell them fairly young nonetheless. According tot he Laboratory Animal Resource Center at University of California San Francisco, mouse pups are pretty well off the nip after a couple of weeks. Chewy (the online pet supply store) suggests mice are fully weaned at around three weeks, and typically pet stores begin selling them when they are 5-8 weeks old.
This is all to say: I got baby mice in Mid-May but I don't know how baby those babies were. I do suspect one was a bit younger than the other two since she was notably smaller.
Baby mice are always exciting because like all babies they're going to grow. And, yes, of course this means that their bodies will change. In the past two weeks they've all gotten larger. But most excitingly their personalities get bigger.
So anyway, these are the less-little little girls:
Junebug
The littlest when we bought her, Junebug has grown into a bold athlete. She will leap up, grab hold of the screen top to their cage, and crawl about on it. She runs with her sisters but she runs different. Sometimes, if another mouse is running with her, they might stop or change direction and be propelled along on the wheel for a bit. When they do this, she keeps running, and she just hops over them. She hops a lot. I have watched as she has done solo runs and would do little jumps as the wheel turned. Run, leap, run, leap, run.
There is a tension to her body. When I hold her, I can feel taut muscles and energy humming within her. She's hard to hold. She will leap from my hand as soon as I scoop her up, bouncing about in the cage until I finally catch her. Once I'm holding her, she is in constant motion so I turn my open palms into a treadmill for her.
Dandelion
The most graceful of the bunch is Dandelion. At the beginning, I feared she would be a bit of a bully. She would chase Junebug around and, a few times, we found Junebug missing a bit of fur and I suspected Dandelion. I have observed her chase Junebug around a couple times now that they've reached adulthood, but I don't have the same bullying concerns about it.
Dandelion is quiet and gentle in her movements. When I hold her, she is still. She takes calm steps. She looks around and washes her face. She isn't afraid, although, like many mice she runs and hides when a hand invades her cage.
Dandelion is a tidier. She carries around bits of bedding, seemingly in search of a better place to put it. She likes to bathe Petal, and to be bathed. This, I believe, is why she winds up chasing Junebug around. I imagine her saying, "It's time for your bath," and Junebug squealing, "Never!" as she leaps for the cage's screen ceiling.
And, finally: Petal. Petal is quick and nervous. If she's out when you walk near their cage, she darts into hiding faster than a snap. When I hold her, she never settles. Her body hums, alert with nerves. Despite being the most fearful of the three, Petal seems to have the most clout with her sisters. While Junebug flees from Dandelion's bathing efforts, she submits to Petal's. The first time Junebug climbed their ceiling, she returned to the ground and received a thorough inspection from Petal. Petal, I suspect, is the one who determines where their nests will be. Once, she spent an evening chewing a hole into a closed box that I had provided to give some additional height in their cage. Afterwards, all three girls slept in a pile inside the box. This made them, initially, hard to find but, eventually, easy to retrieve.
Petal loves to run on their wheel. Their wheel is really just a disc with a stand that holds it in the center. Much like a kid with a merry-go-round, Petal likes to run very quickly, getting the disc to move as fast as possible, and then stop, allowing herself to be spun around while just sitting. When she runs with her sisters, sometimes she decides to stop, or to switch directions, to create the same effect.
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