The tiny queer farm mouspital

11/09/2024

-shaming
Schrodinger's snack-stash - a fun new game to play with your human!

Y'know, the abandoned snack that materialises out of thin air 2-5 business days after acquisition/ hiding, when you innocently fluff a pillow and get showered in mystery sticky crumbs? Or discover a leathery piece of pasta laminated (apparently with yacht varnish) to the good blanket just as you hand it to a guest?

The tiny anarchists (https://www.facebook.com/share/p/SGJ7hJyHpfY8kdnq/) enhance this experience by chewing and digging holes in any piece of clothing/ furniture/ bed linen that smells even a bit like food, just in case there's a snack underneath

In fairness to them, the humans are obviously weird interdimensional cryptids (their hands just appear! Out of nowhere! And pick you up when you've *just* found something interesting!) So they *could* have top-secret snack compartments in (checks notes) their kneecaps 👀👀

10/09/2024

-shaming time: meet the Tiny Anarchists

Does anyone else have That One Cage/ enclosure/ group who are somehow responsible for 90% of the chaos, property destruction, and increasingly surreal attempts to beast-proof things in the building Because that's our tiny anarchists/ saboteurs/ pointy crime-beasts

Some background: for expediency during a particularly spectacular period of mouse-chaos* last year, all my hairless girls live in the same enclosure. And from the age of 6 weeks or so, they've directed their considerable creative energy to horrible crimes and making the entire world their chew-toy

They're exhausting, and I love them dearly 😅😶 Even if they DID go full Lord Of The Flies on my breakfast just as I was telling a nice commenter how mice are politer than rats

*if i'm being honest, this description applies every day of the week

[ID: a series of 4 photos showing (1) an empty blue plate with a few folorn crumbs on it. (2) A suspicious trail of yellow scrambled egg on a blue background, leadingaway from the plate. Also Wednesday, a dark grey hairless mouse. (3)The trail ending in half a bagel, with scrambled egg blast-radius, being dragged behind the pillows by a determined-looking Wednesday-mouse /end ID]

01/09/2024

Rodent-shaming time!

Stormé deLaverie just ran up my arm (I have been blessed and favoured), perched winsomly on the edge of my plate, (d'aww) then calmly stole my last chip before I could even protest

Y'all she's 2... She's so polite at mealtimes that I can only conclude she's been planning this stunt for months. She weighs less than the chip did (a moment of silence for our fallen comrade, sweer potato fry)

[ID: a blurry photo of a small brown/ white mouse determinedly dragging a sweet potato fry out of sight of the viewer. A second mouse (Selene) is poised to grab it as soon as Stormé drops her guard]

01/09/2024

Enrichment! Rodent people talk about it a lot, but we tend to focus on the "what to do" over the "why?" (valid: we've got enclosures to clean and electronics to replace). This video from APOPO does a beautiful job of explaining what enrichment is, and how it helps their (giant pouched) rats. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTlZO4xCARs

For me, the most helpful thing was realising "keeping their brain happy" can be really simple

It's pretty easy to get into the long grass of "am I doing the right thing" closely followed by "am I _buying_ the right thing?", "am I doing enough?", and *gah anxious overwhelm*

Now I'm goint to be asking myself better questions: "are they experiencing variety?" "Do they have opportunities to problem-solve and learn?" "...to play and socialise?"

I'm also reminding myself and anyone else worrying about the beasties feeling bored today, that scrunched up paper bags/ mouse-safe food containers with some interesting-smelling crumbs/ handfulls of cardboard out of the recycling bin exist
🩵 🐀🛹🎟⛸️🐁🩵

Meet Erin Sackett, APOPO’s Animal Health and Welfare Officer in Siem Reap, Cambodia. With a background in wildlife and domesticated animal care spanning nine...

30/08/2024

Rodent-shaming! And *deep breath* an actual update

1. Mouspital is still Mouspital-ing. Also quite full, and with a good few mice who have ongoing medical needs and considerable vet bills. (Paypal is q***r_farm_mouspital (at) gmail.com, obviously no pressure at all 😊 )

1b). Life is... A Lot, and has been for the past (yikes) 2 years or so, with little chance of getting better anytime soon. I'm more ok than I was?

2. The page/ being online.
Between fancy phone cameras with more software than they used for the Moon landings*, and social media peer-pressuring us into this bu****it editorialism
over even the most trivial parts of life... I'd like to post considerably more, with considerably less perfectionism and angst. (See also: "done is better than perfect")

So. I'm going to have a go at a bit of a ~rodent-shaming~ series, because it'll be funny and maybe informative, and also involve less of the "spending 15 minutes trying to get a single photo that looks like a mouse not an eldritch monstrosity while pi***ng them off, when I could instead be playing with said mouse". Because now I'm actually thinking about how doing the social media dance has affected my priorities, and ugh.)

Love to all of you, and thank you for swinging by and being excellent humans to your various animals 🩵
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*not fact-checked but seems a reasonable guess

(A) See human? The perfect pattern of teeth marks around the cinnamon swirl *improves* it.

(B) Bonus points and mouse kisses to anyone who identifies this proprietary (former) charger cable and keeps the comments section ~appropriate~ 😅💀

29/08/2024

✨️Important artistic update✨️

Mice report excellent progress on their mixed media installation, "Shawshank II" - wallpaper, drywall, miscellaneous graffiti.

Rather appropriately, I've *never* found plaster dust, because they are nothing if not committed to their art. The question is whether they're (a)neatly hiding the plaster in their (or Irian's?) trouser pockets for discreet disposal outdoors, (b) neatly packaging it in the various plastic bags they keep stealing (source unknown) to sell to impressionable local teenagers, or (c) eating it.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/JJiDFcTrc3wyobiA/

09/07/2024

Stormé De Laverie loves you and says to please go and take your meds if you didn't already 🩵🩷🩵

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: a slender white and caramel brown mouse, with large pale pink ears perches on the edge of a dark blue bowl to steal my museli. There is a rainbow pill organiser on the bed next to the bowl, as if she's just taken her meds]

09/07/2024

All in a day's work *sigh*

Note for rat people: escaped mice get excited, and move at approximately mach f**k. Even with lighting fast reflexes, they need to be extremely chill, extremely distracted, or on/ in something grab-able. Or occasionally* unable to move fast because they're dangling perilously from somewhere they don't belong and just dropped their one brain cell.
*Gaspode

The Mouspital residents also recognise, and in some cases know how to escape from, 2 different designs of humane trap.
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[Image description: sms conversation between Irian and me.

Irian: there's a silver-grey mouse wandering about, came into my room and then back to the living room and kitchen, not very fast but I couldn't catch them so I put down water for them by the sink (smile emoji)

Austen: Thank you! That's bby Sybil - got her now but she spent 3/4 of yesterday sitting on your ivar shelves sniggering at me
/End ID)

03/07/2024

Govenor Harvey Milk says hi and also have you heard about this rad (decor-appropriate) yellow makeup* the Smells-scary-Vet-person** has?

*Fluoresciene
**SOMEONE came hideously close to losing an eye 6 weeks ago, hence needing the yellow _Where's Wally The Corneal Ulcer_ goop. He's extremely calm and patient, but showed off ALL his infernal-eye-drop-evasion moves just to remind us not to take liberties

27/06/2024

Harriet Tubman just made a rare appearance to remind all of us why responsible and ethical breeding practice is SO important. Recognising that she may well be the first member of a new subspecies Mus musculus domesticus var. littlesh*tticus, she was even magnanimous enough to pose for photos (also featured: Magnificent Void and all round sweetheart Lizzo)

She also gently reminds everyone that even the most sensible and well prepared of us will continue to underestimate the determination and cunning of h***y rodents *hyperventilates*

25/06/2024

Kibble day
Kibble day
Doot doot doot doot
Kibble day

Urrrgh it's hotter than a demon's ar****le and I just mixed 20kg of kibble, because we were about to run out and THE BEASTS HUNGER

Specifically the (increasingly large) babies, who hoovered through the previous batch like a horde of honey badgers preparing for famine in half the normal time

"Ye gods the decent stuff from Rat Rations is expensive, f**kit I'm mixing my own" I said. "I'll be able to factor in everyone's special diet" I said. "Eh, I can keep up with making kibble every 2-3 months it'll be FINE" I said... *mutter grumble*

"Hold up, my Vet bills are SO much better now they're not eating (checks fine print) mystery filler ingredient/ floor sweepings", I said. And here's the thing: it really does make a difference, and I love having well, happy mice

14/05/2024

mouse rope noir
- Irian

14/05/2024

Selene, Dolly, Lyra, and whoever is doing the nyoom - engaged in consensual rice thievery
- Irian ☀️🌿

28/04/2024

(P)UPDATE!

Beans are EATING! And finding their muscles and WRIGGLING (and dear God I'm so relieved!) Great-grandma Audré, g. grandad Harvey, and Harriet's mum and aunties are being amazing - they've been keeping the beans warm, washed, and free from constipation since birth - and they all get VERY PUT OUT when I borrow them at feeding time.

Suggestions welcome for how to explain "yes you are a much better mouse parent than the human, and you *are* doing everything right but also you're nearly 2 years old and definitely not lactating" to an irate mouse?

(Update on mumma Harriet and how we got into this situation (sigh) at some point because I need a nap)

27/04/2024

Soooo I'm hand-rearing newborn mice for the first time... and it's a whole (thankfully small) litter.
I know their chances of making it to weaning... aren't great - but they absolutely deserve full bellies and loving care while they're here
*deep breaths*
(Pictures soon, am zombie)

21/03/2024

Untitled installation - mixed media (drywall, mouse teeth, carelessly placed turd)

12/09/2023

Horribly poorly and beset by 31 baby mice here (20, 21 and 22 days old today and finding new ways to commit crime and escape containment every day) I'm having a gentle snuggle with sweet old queens Fey and Nettie

You can't have photos of their wander, though, because they have VIEWS about photos. You can't have video evidence for my sudden realisation that Fey looks perfectly, uncannily like Snufkin* either, because mice revenge-pi***ng in the charger port is probably not good for new phones

In other news, ooohh I just thought of more baby mouse names. Also some of said babies will be looking for new hoomins soonish - please do dm me (strict fb rules here)!

****

*A Wild, fey, magical, goofy, wise little being from the Moomins who may well possess eldritch powers and forbidden knowledge, but he's super chill

30/08/2023

Today in (carefully supervised) ratty enrichment*

*Why is every piece of bed linen I own now in the mending pile YOU LITTLE SH*TS (affectionate)?!