Claire Burlington

Small creatures of any kind need warmth, shelter and food. With regard to the Burlington-Taylor Mouse Quartet, shelter and warmth were pretty straightforward. I initially kept them in a small box in a larger box, with a hot water bottle under the small box. I got rid of their old nest and gave them a red flannel to sleep in with some pieces of toilet paper and torn-up newspaper as additional bedding. I kept the box on a chair next to a radiator until one of the cats became too interested, whereupon I kept the box in the cat-proof kitchen cupboard where the mouse nest had originally been found. I did chuckle at myself, earnestly taking a cardboard box of mice in and out of the kitchen cupboard (and putting an extra hot water bottle down the side of it…) but not for long – it’s a serious business, looking after blind, deaf, orphan mice.

The first mouse house: a box in a box

Inside the first mouse house

The question of food was more problematic. After their initial apparent acceptance of the paintbrush, the mice seemed to start struggling to eat. So I went into mother mouse overdrive, trying all manner of things to try to make the process of staying alive easier, warmer or containing more calories.

I trimmed down a range of paintbrushes to see if a different shape or different bristles would be preferred. I kept the milk warm for the duration of each feeding session on a hot water bottle. I tried a piece of wool soaked in milk squashed to a tiny point by encasing it in a trimmed down straw – that worked for a few drops with the tiniest one, which felt like a major triumph. I went to the chemist and came away with a 10mm syringe and a small eyedropper. Both dwarfed the mice. Seriously dwarfed. Like a baby would be dwarfed by that giant escaped breast in that Woody Allen film. Trying to feed them with syringe or eyedropper would only end in drowning, so I persevered with paintbrushes. I went to the pet shop and picked up some powdered kitten milk formula (also good for baby guinea pigs, rabbits and other orphaned small animals). I explained to the lady behind the counter what I was up to and asked if they had any 1mm syringes as a paintbrush alternative. She immediately rushed out to the back and returned proffering a handful of tiny syringes and refusing any payment, which was very kind of her. Back home, I realised that the mouth of a 1mm syringe is the same size as the mouth of a 10mm syringe… At one point, at about four in the morning, when a mouse was struggling to accept the paintbrush, I thought of Harry Harlow’s Mummy Monkey experiments (Love is… something to eat and something to cuddle – especially something to cuddle) and did consider wrapping my hand in furry material, before the stickiness of the formula milk made me decide to hope that my inate spiritual soft-and-fluffiness would do.

The Mice - about 9 days old

And pretty swiftly, they became expert at accepting the paintbrush.

Then I asked the internet for its opinion on hand-rearing field mice.

Well, thank goodness I did. Baby mice need a bit of a hand (or, well, strictly speaking a tongue. A mouse tongue.) with the old excretion, so mimicking mother mouse washing them would be essential if they weren’t going to expire from terminal constipation. Mine didn’t seem to be suffering in that area, but, heck, that would be a horrendous way to go, so I followed the advice. A hot tip from the world wide web of field-mice rearing enthusiasts (mostly from the States) was to use a damp ‘Q-tip’ or piece of toilet paper, so that’s what I did and it worked beautifully. I appreciate that the word ‘beautifully’ may not be the first to spring to mind when considering the process of elimination in rodents, but I assure you, it’s appropriate.

To make sure everymouse was fed and, er, assisted each session, I put them into a separate tupperware box (on the radiator or hot water bottle) after they’d had their first go at the paintbrush. So the mealtime routine became:

• Feed with milky paintbrush,
• Stimulate bowel/bladder event,
• Pop in tupperware box on the radiator
• Repeat previous three steps with the other three mice
• Feed with milky paintbrush
• Place in nest box
• Repeat previous two steps with the other three mice
• Place all four mice in milky hand in the hope they’ll get some milk on their feet and fur and lick it off
• Return to nest box

And then once a day, I’d add the following:

• ‘Wash’ mouse with a larger damp, warm paintbrush
• Replace in small tupperware box on radiator and rub gently with warm toilet paper until dry
• Repeat previous two steps with the other three mice
• Return mice to nest box.

It took blinkin’ ages.

The internet recommended feeding tiny mice every two hours. As the feeding process was taking about an hour, I upped that to every three to four hours, slightly less frequently in the day and slightly more frequently at night. They seemed to be doing OK. They were getting proper fur. They were starting to walk, rather than crawl or seep. They were demanding the paintbrush, open-mouthed like baby birds and then grabbing a firm hold of it with their front feet. They were amazing!

The Mice - about 9 days old

So, life at Burlington-Taylor Towers has, of late, largely been of the non-theatrical variety. Obviously, la vie de Claire is one long musical comedy, but this act has been filled with copywriting, personal and family admin, decision-making and hand-rearing baby field mice.

You know. As you do.

I had an uncharacteristic bout of tidying up. So extraordinarily uncharacteristic that the kitchen cupboards were turned out. And it was while I was poking about in the faintly remembered world of bleach bottles and J-cloths that I came across the mouse nest. Such a cleverly constructed mouse nest in the middle of a pile of dusters, with chewed up yellow duster fluff for cosiness and torn up scraps of newspaper for structure.  Mamma Mouse was there, but took one look at my ugly mug and turned tail, leaving a pulsing bundle of warm baby mouseness behind.

Four tiny, tiny mouselets. Stumpy-legged embryonic piglets with skin like suede. Part-developed ears completely flat to their heads. Eyes shut.

This was where I made a bad decision.

I scooped up the whole nest and put it in a box. Grabbing my trusty caterpillar-shaped clockwork torch (it was night-time; I never do housework in daylight), I took the box out to the back garden, where I built a mouse nest shelter from paving stones, and placed the nest within. I lifted a corner of the duster to check they were all in there and saw that Mamma was missing. She must have done a runner in the few seconds it had taken me to pop the nest in the box, so she was presumably still in the house.

Heck.

Disaster.

So. Back inside we went. I tore a mouse-sized hole in the box, so Mamma could get back in if she so chose, and put the whole lot back in the cupboard, cursing myself for having even attempted to move the nest. I decided to leave them overnight to give Mamma a chance to return and maybe move them elsewhere. And if she didn’t, then, well, I’d think about that when and if it happened.

The next morning, there was no Mamma Mouse. And the pulsing bundle of warm baby mouseness was not quite so pulsing and warm.

I was honour-bound to take over where I had unwittingly forced Mamma Mouse to leave off.

And that’s where the paintbrush came in.

Mouse nipples are very small. I don’t know this from personal experience; I’ve never knowingly seen a mouse nipple, let alone measured one, but I’m fairly confident that they really are quite astoundingly petite. So the question was, how could I replicate a mouse nipple sufficiently accurately to dupe the teeny meeces into suckling from it? The answer seemed to be to dash to the shop to pick up assorted milk products (soya milk, evaporated milk, condensed milk, cat milk…), trim a fine paintbrush down to just a few hairs and hope for the best.

I sat their nest box on a hot water bottle and got on with trying to keep the miniscule creatures alive.

They took to the paintbrush impressively swiftly. I had to find the best way to hold them (wrapped in three fingers, so head is poking over index finger, held there by first finger and thumb) but they did latch on and suck, after a fashion. Warmed cat milk went down best, though the droplets they were consuming were really little more than molecules. They must have been starving, having had 18 hours or so (which, if they were 5 days old when I found them – as my later internet research indicated they were – would be 15% of their lives) with nothing to eat, so an iota of anything must have been so welcome, even if it was coming from something that neither smelt nor felt like Mamma Mouse.

A few days later, having gained confidence in my brush technique, I thought of taking some snapshots:

The Meeces - about 8 days old

8-day old mice and a penny

And that’s how Great Mouse Adventure began…