Mouse adventure!

It's all babies! Besides Peanut, here is another baby adventure that crawled out of the magic bag a little while back!

We were walking in our lovely local town of Los Gatos, waiting to cross the street, when we noticed a tiny mouse on the edge of the road, starting to crawl towards the middle. Standers by squealed at their children not to touch it, and a small crowd started to form. To my surprise it was Colin (my six foot husband) who stepped out to rescue it from certain death.

On bringing it to safety, we were going to place it in a hedge until we noticed that it was only a baby - so young infact that it's eyes were not yet open! We knew that if we left it, it would certainly die, so found ourselves coming home with a tiny grey mouse with white paws.

On the first night, it really seemed touch and go, we'd stopped at a pet store and got a tiny feeder and special baby pet milk, and I furnished an old shoe box with some fabric and tissue. We fed the little mouse several times, and stimulated him with a cottonbud, as we knew his mother would, and went to sleep - half expecting to wake up the next morning and find a tiny body.

To my surprise he was alive! and his tiny eyes were now open! Over a couple of weeks we fed and then weened him, watching him grow stronger and delighting in watching him eat grapes and seeds. We never planned to keep him - especially not as he was supposed to be wild, so we gradually withdrew human contact, and at about 3 weeks after he had come into our lives, I took him to a safe and wonderful wild space, and watched him leave the shoe box - now a grown, strong mouse. Our work was done!

We took a few pictures during his stay, my favourite is one where mouse and Cookie sniff each other hello.