Happy holidays to all my blog friends and readers! I hope you are having a merry time with your friends, family and animals.
Santa brought Ginger, our dog, a new toy, which she is trying her hardest to destroy. The toy has already lasted almost 24 hours, which means it must be pretty durable!
First, the sad news. Houdini, the little white mouse I rescued, passed away at the beginning of December. I had only had him three weeks, but he was already becoming quite friendly. He seemed healthy, but we think that he could have had neurological or physical damage from his previous home. I’ll miss him–he was very sweet and definitely proved to me that mice make great pets!
Now, some better news. About a week ago I got three new mice. Christmas mice! I was only going to get two, but fell for a third one as well. They are lively, energetic, playful, and pretty mischievous!
First order of business–they still need names. So, any name suggestions would be great!
The gray and white mouse is the ringleader. He’s the biggest and definitely the boldest. He spends the most time out and loves running on the wheel in their cage. He’s got long, scruffy hair and ends up with bedding and other stuff caught in his hair.
The black and white mouse is tiny compared to the gray and white mouse–he’s about half his size. I assume he is probably younger, but I have no information about their ages. So far, he’s definitely the friendliest of the three from the training that I’ve been doing with them.
The mostly white mouse is definitely the most shy. He’s medium in size between the other two. He’s become good buddies with the black and white mouse, although the grey and white mouse picks on him sometimes.
All three were completely unsocialized to people when I first got them. Two of them would even run and hide anytime I came into the room. They don’t know anything about being held or petted and were convinced I was a huge monster that was going to have them for dinner. Whenever I tried holding one of them, he would (literally) launch himself out of my hands and several feet across the room. Who knew a tiny little mouse could jump so far!
I’ve been working on getting them to approach me and my hands and have started working just a bit on holding them. Most of this, so far, has been taking place in my bathtub! The tub is a nice, safe place to work with small animals. I want to get them friendly and I want the process to be as stress free as possible. The tub is great because I don’t have to worry at all about them escaping.
I think these little guys are going to be a lot of fun to train! I’ll definitely write more about them in the coming weeks. And, any name suggestions would be much appreciated.
Happy Holidays!
~Mary
They are so cute! Are they all males? The black and white one reminds me of a hamster I had named Tyr as a kid. My other ones was Ashes which would be a cute name for the gray one. Of Scruffy lol, since he is. You could always go with Oreo, unless you were wanting very original names. Since they are Christmas mice you could go with reindeer names Dancer, Prancer, Vixen (well that’s a girl name), etc. I’ll keep thinking. I’ll get back to you if I come up with something. Merry Christmas!!
I enjoyed reading this entry. I had some mice for a science project in 6th grade. They were black and white and adorable. I simply bred one litter for the albino X color mouse to see what would occur. Kept everybody. Maybe the oldest survived 2-3 years. I hope you do better with your three mouseketeers 😉 If they are males, you could name them for the 3 musketeers Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. D’artagnan (sp) was the fourth younger one. Best wishes. Look forward to readling more about them
Sorry to hear about Houdini. 🙁
Have you decided on names for your new little furries yet? I got to thinking about Mickey Mouse and ended up with Mickey, Mousey and Mistle.
I am sorry you lost little Houdini but not surprised. I could tell by his hunched posture and scruffy fur that he was not well, probably even in some pain from an earlier injury. Sad, he came with quite the story……….Sometimes three little boys who have grown up together do get along for life, but it is risky. There is always the chance that one or more will suddenly turn on one another and you can end up with severely injured mice or worse. If you can afford it, you may want to consider neutering them, this will make them smell no more than female mice and fight a lot less (I have all my male mice neutered) …….btw they are sure pretty little guys 🙂
Hi there,
Thanks for the comment on my blog over the weekend.
I am currently looking into neutering and am planning to have it done. Two of the boys are getting along fabulously, but the third, who’s in charge, has started picking on one of the other ones sometimes. I’m talking to several vets in the area about neutering, trying to figure out which vet clinic would be the best choice. I would rather not have to separate them, but I also do not want them injuring each other or picking on each other.
cheers,
Mary
This hierarchy sounds much like a herd of horses with the pecking order, relationships and ringleader situation.??
What came to mind in terms of names were the Marx Brothers: Groucho for grey and
white (ringleader) Harpo for the shy silent one, and Chico for your B/W boy.