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Old July 7th, 2007, 10:08 AM
Radish Radish is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 21
Baby mouse - what happened?

Well, those of you who have read my other mouse thread know that I just can't say "no" when it comes to saving these little critters (and pretty much any critter, in fact). :love:

Thursday evening I was at the barn riding my house when my friend (who owns the place) came running out carrying a Tupperware container with paper towel in it, hands it to me and says, "You're the mouse lady, it's yours!"

So I took the little one home (about one and a half weeks, I think - a week older than my last mousie rescue), warmed "him" up, got some half 'n' half cream in him, and he perked right up! I was feeding him every 2 hours that evening, left him for 4 hours that night (boy was he hungry when I woke up to feed him! ), and went to every 3 hours the next day. He seemed to be doing so well.

That "next day" was yesterday and I had to pick a friend up at the airport in Buffalo (I'm in Toronto so it's about 2 hours away and across the border) so I had to leave the little one at home. I figured he'd be all right. When I got back (7 hours later - took longer than expected), he didn't look very good but once I got some food into him, he perked right back up again and was running around like normal. I was checking on him every hour and giving him a little drink (and some rice cereal which is what I fed my other mouse rescue) until about 3am when I finally fell asleep.

I had set my alarm to 6am and when I checked on him, he didn't seem to be breathing and wouldn't move at all. Every 10 seconds or so his body would tense up and his mouth would open up - it looked like he was trying to throw up or suck in a breath or something. ??? Within about 5 minutes, he was gone.

What could've happened in those 3 hours??? I know baby rodents are hard to raise but since I managed with a younger one and he'd made it through the first night that he'd be okay. Could he have had internal damage that happened before I got him that just took that long to take effect?

Sorry for the novel, I'm just sad for the little guy and he'll be buried next to my other mouse rescue who lived for a full 2.5 years.

Thanks everyone.
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