#92 The house mouse, pest not pet

I was quite surprised last week on our first really cold day to see a mouse scurry into the garage when I pushed the door opener. We see a lot of chipmunks around here, but I’m sure this was a mouse. Mice can get through a 1/4” opening, so he was probably just interrupted on his usual route and didn‘t need to have me open the door.

It made me think of the pet mouse I had in first grade. For some reason I took her to school in a matchbox. My friend “Tommy,” who is now a well-known professor of philosophy at a large Midwestern university, asked if he could hold her. I carefully opened the box and looked at those terrified little eyes. I handed my cute little pet to Tommy, who then squeezed her, and poof, my little mousie was gone.

Mice can jump up to 12 inches from the floor and down eight feet to the floor. The house mouse is the second most adaptable animal on the planet, with man being the first. They are native to Central Asia and arrived here with the European immigrants. They eat a lot and damage even more with their contamination of food stuffs. One mouse can have 5 to 10 litters a year (its life span). One mouse, up to 60 babies a year. If each of those 60 has 60 babies, and they each. . .and that was 1946. . .

So, I guess Tommy did the world a favor.