Wildlife

While our house has been undergoing some major changes in the recent months, we have had to spend a few nights over at my parents house for various reasons. One night, while eating dinner on my parents patio, I noticed a small mouse creep out of the garden and under a table. It quickly darted back, and I thought that was the end of it. We were, obviously, making loud noise, had the lights on etc, so we assumed it would wait until we were absent before appearing again.

But come out again it did. And it stayed out. It crept all over the patio for about three or four minutes before I decided I would catch that mouse.

It was so little that I just took a plastic cup that the girls had had some chalk in, and put it over the top. There was a little scuffle, but nothing undignified on my end (much to Steve's surprise). The mouse was caught.

Since I had caught it, I didn't want to let it go again. My parents would not be happy to know it was still in their yard. But neither did I want to instigate it's swift demise.

Since we had our stick insect with us, I figured that enclosure was as good as any for the mouse, and I promptly put it inside. We gave it a box to hide in and some food and it lived in there for half a week. Then I talked to a friend of mine who said that mice can actually eat insects, and I was suddenly afraid for Mary (our most recently surviving stick insect), and I relocated the mouse to my parents old fish tank.

After some discussion, we named the mouse Emily, though Sophie, who was strongly supporting the name Emma was convinced we were just saying her full name (Emma Leigh), rather than Emily. Tricky Tricky.

Emily lived with us in her fish tank for another two weeks until I cleaned it out one morning and accidentally put the cardboard house we had made for her too close to the drinking thing. She did some amazing climbing and escaped without us even realizing. Goodbye Emily.

The girls were pretty devastated when they found out, and wanted to conduct search parties. When we had convinced them she had probably gone outside (hopefully), they asked when we could get our next pet.

I'm a bit sad that these are the only photos we have of Emily, and that she was with us for such a short time. But I'm also glad that we didn't have to commit to looking after another pet, and doing arduous things like actually take her to the vet and find out if she (or he) had any diseases that could kill us. Whew.