Vanilla Mice Mice, Baby

My daughter, the champion of all lost causes, found three orphaned mice the other day. Said mice are no longer than my pinkie finger from nose to end of tail and have neither opened eyes or ears, yet. She has made these mice her mission in life.

Bless the world wide web, we know to feed them KMR (that's kitten milk replacement, to you) every two hours. Yes. That is correct. She feeds them every two hours with an eye dropper. We also know to stimulate their elimination by gently rubbing their little mousy genitals-as disturbing as that may be. Two nights ago, I was awakened by a burning, chemical smell. I learned in the morning that my dear daughter attempted at 2:30 AM to create a warming incubator by placing the mouse home (a plastic bucket) over her reading lamp. It warmed, all right. Warmed to burning a hole through the blasted thing. Note to PETA and ASPCA: No mice were injured during this event.

Sadly, they are not thriving. The littlest mouse died today and I'm brushing up on hymns for the other two. If my kid doesn't get some sleep and eat pretty soon, I suspect she'll be next. That is, if the Hanta virus doesn't get my entire family first.

Loss is hard, especially for kids, so I'm somewhat sad about the whole situation. And...they're cute little, disease carrying vectors.