# is this bad?



## nanette37 (Feb 1, 2010)

i didnt know where to post this so i just posted it here. my mom is freaking out cuz she thinks im gonna get sick and die cuz i sleep in the same room with my mice with the door shut. she doesnt want me breathing in the aspen bedding or the pee and poo smell. so can i get sick from this? thanks


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## SarahY (Nov 6, 2008)

Until I moved out of my parents I always had a small zoo in my bedroom and never had a problem 

Sarah xxx


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## WillowDragon (Jan 7, 2009)

It may trigger or aggrivate allergies if you have them, and too much ammonia is good for noone, but unless you have like 300 mice in your bedroom and don't clean them out for a month, i doubt very much it would make you sick.

W xx


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## Toast (Nov 11, 2009)

Living with mice is perfectly fine, as long as you don't live like them. Just keep those cages clean


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

The only downside of having mice in your living space is that mousey odor settles into everything made of paper or fabric. Buy a big bottle of Febreze.


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## nanette37 (Feb 1, 2010)

thanks everyone! i'll show her this post so she will calm down  :lol:


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## WolfWhisper (Mar 2, 2010)

I currently have 16 mouse cages in my room, 3 leopard gecko tanks and a bearded dragon. At one time you could have added about 50 fish tanks to that too, I had everything from snails and shrimp, angelfish, killifish and show guppies.


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## itsasilverspoon (Oct 1, 2009)

I remember when I lived at home and got my first mice, and my mother had the same worries. However, I had 12 does in my room without any problem at all. Of course, if you don't clean their cages for ages, it will start smelling, however this obviously wouldn't be in the best interest of the mice either. Bucks will tend to stink up your room a bit more, but can be fairly well managed with a good cage cleaning regimen.


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

People have lived with mice and other rodents for tens of thousands of years, at least.


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

moustress said:



> The only downside of having mice in your living space is that mousey odor settles into everything made of paper or fabric.


I've never noticed this.


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

I didn't either, until I packed a bag for the World Science Fiction Convention in Chcago in 2000. I couldn't figure out why my suitcase and clothes all smelled so strongly. I didn't know what it was. I had gotten so used to it that I just didn't take note of it until was well away from that environment. I had almost 350 meeces at that time, after rescuing a half a petstores worth of rodents that were otherwise going to be put down. I don't care if you clean our tanks every day, it will smell like meeces.

Now I appreciate the difference between a clean mousery and one that has something amiss like wet bedding from the water bottle wicking in to the litter, or other things like a dead mousie on a warm summer's day. The first book on keeping mice that I bought recommended wearing a nylon jumpsuit while doing mousework, and I didn't get it. I got it now. I tie my hair up in a bandana, and usually just do the mousework in shorts and a T-shirt which is changed almost ever night for fresh.

One of the little things I want to do in my mousery is install the kind of vent one would have in bathroom. I think that would be really, really nice, both for the sake of economy in heating and cooling, and for reducing ammonia and other odors. Right now I have a large air cleaner with charcoal filters and several large bags of zeolite that are swapped out to recharge in the sun every week or so.


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

I have a vent in my mouse room. I keep the fan in the window blowing out all year round, too. Maybe that's why I don't notice it.

I also always have fewer than 100 mice.


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Yupper. I was thinking of venting into the crawl spaces and eaves. I'd need to seal up a space so I didn't spread through the floor. Meanwhile, I should look for a couple of new bags of zeolite as a wild mouse decided to chew holes through the netting. Maybe I could use an old sock or something with the stuff that spilled all over; don't like to handle the stuff more than necessary as it contains the stuff out of which asbestos is made.


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## Toast (Nov 11, 2009)

Hmmm... I've just gotten so used to it that I can't smell it unless I take a long break (over a month) away from home. Though, oddly enough, I think the fresh bedding smeel wonderful and it helps get rid of headaches


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

The smell of aspen shavings invokes nostalgia for me as my father was a master carpenter.


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## Raindropmousery (Jan 10, 2010)

I sleep in my room with 82 mice, budgies, parakeets, finches, canarys, parrots, reptiles, fish, and rats and im fine lol


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## nanette37 (Feb 1, 2010)

wow thats a lot of mice!


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Heehee!! :lol: Nah, not really...they're small and don't take up an awful lot of space.


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## gerana (Jul 21, 2009)

I also sleep in the same room with my mice  Living in one-room flat doesn't give any options..
And the number of mice at the moment is about 70+ and more is coming.. (more litters  )

The smell isn't that bad... I don't care and my friends don't care (they have used to my characteristic perfume :mrgreen: )
My sister is allergic to me.. or to my clothes. :roll:


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