Gah.

[helen99]

My favorite mouse Ygraine got a large tumor on the back of her neck, and as expected, she died a few days ago.

This part was sad but expected. What I didn't expect was that her cage mates decided to have a snack... and ate the tumor. The rest of my ex-mouse was left intact, but wellp, um, her neck had been ripped open and the tumor was gone and there was a large tumor-shaped empty space where it once had been.

I am now totally traumatized for life, again. Dag Gonnit, maybe I should quit keeping rodents - they always do stuff like this. I still remember rialian's experience with the saponified hampsters who had escaped from their Petsmart cages and fallen into some pvc tubing. I also remember the case of the exploding baby mouse that temporarily lost its lower abdomen due to a birth defect (it grew back). Rodents seem to self-destruct in some horrid fashion much more often than other types of animals.

I'm still waiting for stuff like what other mouse owners describe ... "And I was holding my beautiful mouse Pema and she nestled trustingly in my hand as she peacefully breathed her last... I sadly sang Buddhist chants to her to aid her over the Rainbow Bridge and then buried her by the lake in my back yard"...

But no. My mice always die overnight while I'm asleep, whereupon they (or their tumours) get devoured by their cagemates.

Comments

[kitten-goddess.livejournal.com]

Well, that's because you have Rialian, a zombie bathroom, and other disruptive influences. Of course you're going to get Lovecraftian mice!!! *ducks and runs*

[laurelindel.livejournal.com]

Oh, ick. I am sorry!

[helen99.livejournal.com]

I'm used to it... (mice are like that). All I really ask for is that their innards remain inside their skin. But I realize that's a little too much to ask sometimes...

Mice and healing

[iliandriel.livejournal.com]

One thing you are not looking at. Maybe the mice were trying to heal your friend. Maybe they thought if they removed the tumor the mouse would be well. Unfortunately the mouse was dead before they could affect the cure. Or they were angry at the tumor for killing their friend and excised it for killing her. I think all aminals know a lot more than we think they do. As horrible as this experience was for you I hope these words will be a bit of comfort. Big hugs I know what it is to lose a friend. I lost a parakeet one time that was like having a best friend.

Re: Mice and healing

[helen99.livejournal.com]

Very good point... Actually I had thought of that. I heard once of a case where mice gnawed through a rope to free a prisoner. I can see where they'd do the same thing to free one of their friends from something bad.

Re: Mice and healing

[iliandriel.livejournal.com]

All animals share a caring for each other even the one's most noxious. They don't always know how to express it but I think those mice did. They really cared about their friend and took care of what they perceived to be the problem. If they could have healed her I believe the would have.

[elesia.livejournal.com]

Oy... Sorry to hear it!

We kept mice and rats and eventually ceased our own rodent care facilities. It can be just too heart breaking with their high mortality rates. Poor little buggers.

With love..

[helen99.livejournal.com]

Thank you.. Their lifespans really are short. I've yet to have a mouse that lived its full 2-1/2-year lifespan. The oldest mouse I had died at 15 months.

[ahril.livejournal.com]

Yet another reason never to own rodents.

I'm terribly sorry, as I know you do enjoy them immensely, but rats and mice make my skin crawl. The skin of their tales, their little rat/mouse feet, and their beady red eyes give me the creeps.

Remember those ol' biddy elephants in Disney's "Dumbo"? "A MOUSE!" Yep, that'd be me.

On the rare occasion a field mouse does make its way into my home, I am most fortunate to own a highly efficient killer of the feline persuasion. Said mouse never makes it past the livingroom to my sleeping self. Thank the Gods.

I never had a problem with rodents until experiencing the leather jacketed pistol carrying charm of NYC Subway rats. Those rats were larger than, and could easily have dispatched, my cat. Since then, I have a creeped out ickiness where rats/mice are concerned.

[helen99.livejournal.com]

Ah, the NYC rats - I've never seen them but I've heard them described before. My dad was 17 years old and had just finished "gymnasium" (highschool) in Greece, and had graduated in the top 1%. He was looking forward to starting University... but that was not to happen until later. War broke out and his parents sent him to New York to work for a relative who owned a dive called "The King of Hamburgers" where sailors and wharf rats (human and rodent) hung out. Such was my dad's introduction to this country. The basement of this place was beseiged by gigantic rats, which he described as at least a foot and a half long (or more - don't remember exactly, but they were large). The first thing they tried was to get a cat, and the unfortunate creature disappeared by the next day. Then they tried rat poison which these particular rats ate with apparently no effect (or there were so many that it didn't matter). My dad began to study their habits so he could form a plan of attack, and learned that at a certain time each night they would come out of their lair and pass by a certain door en route to the goodies. He waited behind a door with a baseball bat and described annihilating a good number of them. Since my dad was still there by the next day, I assume he must have won the battle...

As for me, I don't mind the pet mice and rats, although their little almost human hands and intelligent eyes are pretty damn ookie sometimes. The critters that really cause me to want to leap out of my skin, though, are spiders...

[gleef.livejournal.com]

Since my dad was still there by the next day, I assume he must have won the battle...

Are you sure? You might have been raised by rats with a clever costume and a heartwrenching story to tell.

[fearadyn.livejournal.com]

It sounds just like an X files story. I remember one with Cancer Man who had to raid hospitals to get to the removed cancer tumors in order to eat them and survive.

I think the mice were possessed by the spirits of other cancer ridden mice who had passed away; after all it is that time of year when the veil is thin. In this manner they just attacked what had killed them. Night Of The Zombie Mouse...

Ok that’s lame, but yes why do caged rodents do such things? I also wonder if rodents in the wild display this behavior.

I have had my experiences with them also-but it was with Gerbils mutilating babies, it affected me so much I had to give them up.

I hadn't really had that problem with mice or rats tho.

I also wonder if the cage mates will get some sort of immunity now, it will be interesting to see in any case.

Anyway my heart goes out to you-we love who we love and it matters not what type of creature it is.

Hi!

[helen99.livejournal.com]

> x-files:
Eww gross! It's interesting how horror stories evolve as society 'evolves'...

> gerbils
Female mice will sometimes kill the babies of those they perceive as rivals. One way to avoid that is to mix all the babies up, rub them together, and then divide the group in half between the two moms (that confuses them). Sometimes they kill their own if they don't think conditions are good (too little food, not enough room, perceived danger, etc.), but that usually takes the form of their milk drying up.

[helen99.livejournal.com]

>immunity

So far so good - none of the others have developed tumors. One is a male and they rarely get tumors for some reason. The two females are doing well so far. I'm beginning to get a little worried though, since four of my mice have come down with tumors over the past two years. These were Sonya (red fawn), Dawn (red and white pathces), Sunflower (red-gold), and now Ygraine. I hope this is not being caused by something environmental that could possibly affect rialian or me. Chances are it's caused by mouse inbreeding and bad genetics, but I get concerned nonetheless.

[silverbromide.livejournal.com]

Helen, have you seen this? Or did you know about it already?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1605806,00.html

[helen99.livejournal.com]

I hadn't seen that! That's so cool - I especially enjoyed the second clip (the slowed down version). So that's what tickles my brain so much when I'm around them. It would make sense that they're communicating with sound that's much more high-frequency than we can hear. I wonder if they have language. I wonder what it would sound like if one slowed it down even further.