Pocket Pet Fun

I've got pet mice. They can entertain me for hours on end. Forget AIM--in college I procrastinated by watching my little mice chew on seeds, chew on the cage, chew on toilet paper rolls, and run round and round on their wheel. They're fantastic little balls of energy.

They're quite tame, too. I got Heidi when she was a month old in July 2005. I introduced her to being held slowly. First I'd just lay my hand in the cage to get her used to my smell. Then I'd put food in my hand and have her crawl up onto it. It took about two weeks for her to crawl up into my hand whenever I put it in the cage. Ada was easier to tame. I got her when she was 2 weeks old in January 2006. She wasn't weaned yet, so I kept her in my coat pocket and feed her a mixture of milk and chow by hand. After a week she was strong enough to eat by herself and I introduced her to Heidi. They get along great. Ada is the dominant one even though she's only half the size of Heidi. Ada shows her dominance by "barbering" Heidi. So I've got one itty-bitty mouse and one bald mouse.

Heidi is 1.5 years old now, and Ada is 1 year old. They've been with me through a lot: 3 boyfriends, an Honor's research thesis, a 1,200 mile drive from VA to TX, plus transitioning from college to medical school. I'm rather attached to them. So when little Ada started sneezing, I became very worried. I did what any concerned pet owner would do and called the vet. It took a lot of calling. Turns out that most vets don't take care of mice. And most receptionists at the vet's office will make you repeat yourself many times when you try to explain the problem:

"Hello, thanks for calling Hillside Veterinary Center. How may I help you?"
"I'd like an appointment for my mouse."
"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
"My mouse. My mouse is sick."
"Oh, your mouse...ok...what seems to be wrong with your mouse?"
"Well, she's sneezing."
"Sneezing? Ok....lemme see if Dr. X will see sneezing mice."

I finally found a vet who would see Ada. Ada was such a good little girl. She crawled right into my hand so I could give her over to the vet to examine. And she didn't bite the vet at all. I really thought she would since the vet was poking and prodding her. First she looked in her ears, eyes, and nose. Then she pried open her mouth to look down her throat. Then she placed Ada on the bell of a stethoscope to listen to her heart and lungs. It cracked me up. The vet was actually doing a thorough exam on a creature less than 3 inches long while it wriggled and squirmed around.

Somehow the vet diagnosed an upper respiratory tract infection and gave me some antibiotic to administer to her daily for the next 10 days BY MOUTH. How in God's name can you get a mouse to happily drink down cherry-flavored antibiotic? Cherry! In fact, the vet added the cherry syrup to the antibiotic and charged me for it. Mice don't like cherry syrup. Maybe cheese or trash-flavored syrup, but not cherry. I spent 30 minutes trying to get Ada to chew on the end of the syringe so I could squirt the medicine down her throat. I ended up just squirting it all over her face. She was pissed. My poor, pissed, sneezing, sticky Ada. It was pretty funny to watch her try to clean it all off. I hope she ingested some of it in the process.

I'll be trying something new tomorrow. I'm going to estimate how much she drinks in a day and mix the antibiotic with the correct amount of water. I hope I get the dosage right. Too much and it's bye bye Ada and Heidi. (I'll be treating Heidi too since it's probably contagious.)

The auriculotemporal nerve hugs the middle meningeal artery after it branches off of V3 in the face. Think about that.