# My dad was raising secret mice



## Frizzle (Oct 6, 2011)

My dad can be pretty gruff, but he has his soft spots. Today, I found out that he'd found some pinkies and had kept them alive for a week in a Little Debbie's box. In part, I think it was boredom, his response to asking what he would have done with them once they grew up was to "kill 'em." I bet he would have let them go in secret though.  My dad first rigged a light bulb to a thermostat, he says he read that baby mice need to stay at about 103 degrees F. Then, he got a tiny syringe, and a tiny needle, and filed the tip off. There was an old printer laying around, so he removed some copper wiring from an extremely small tube, and used that to make a teensy-weensy mouse nipple. He used a warm paper towel to stimulate the bowels. He used a can of condensed milk (it's what he used to raise a squirrel once), and fed them every three hours. They were starting to fur out, but dad says he wasn't thinking and the condensed milk (in the fridge) got old and started to go bad. So they died.

We need to get calves again or something.


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## thewesterngate (May 22, 2012)

AWW. That's so sweet, but so sad that they died.


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## Au Naturel (Jun 8, 2012)

Wow, Im impressed with the job, your dad did, sad that they died though.


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## MojoMouse (Apr 20, 2012)

It's sad, but maybe not unexpected that they didn't survive. But it's so sweet that your dad's a secret softie.


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## tinyhartmouseries (Dec 30, 2010)

Very cute! I've caught my husband babying animals he professes not to care about. Boys are funny!!!


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## Frizzle (Oct 6, 2011)

Yeah. When he was a kid, my grandmother found a pink and hairless squirrel while mowing the lawn. She was like, "Roger! If you want it, come get it, or I'm going to run it over!" He raised that guy up, and when dad would sit in the yard "Jerry" would zip around and climb all over him. Then spring came, and Jerry visited less and less, until one day he didn't come back. I always wondered as a kid why we weren't allowed to shoot the squirrels in our yard, you'd figure they're just as tasty as the ones in the woods, right? I think dad likes to pretend that Jerry's great great grand-squirrels live in our maples to this day.


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## tinyhartmouseries (Dec 30, 2010)

I LOVE that story, Frizzle.


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## Seafolly (Mar 13, 2012)

Frizzle said:


> I think dad likes to pretend that Jerry's great great grand-squirrels live in our maples to this day.


Love this.


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