Vicky Mouse's Story 

I was driving back from Grafton a while back after picking up my newspapers for the Wednesday mailing. While on the road I received an emergency mouse call from a friend who lived in the country. She had caught a mouse, it was under her sink and she asked if I would get rid of it for her.

I assumed I would find a dried up little hunk of fur in a snap trap. When  I arrived I was pointed to a spot under the sink, where the assumed deceased rodent could be found. On my hands and knees, I spotted a furry little thing, hard stuck to a glue trap. Reaching under, slipped the trap out and was surprised to see the fur still had life, leaving me with the responsibility of finishing it off. However,  I quickly  opted not to snuff the mouse and instead, took it and the trap with me back to work.

 The mouse, which I decided was a she mouse,  struggled a little on the trip, but the struggle only resulted in her  getting stuck even worse in the trap. Initially stuck on her  right side, her  face was now stuck in the glue and I was afraid she might suffocate or pull herself  apart in the struggle.

 I hurried back, got some baby oil and started carefully working it into the glue around the mouse. Mice have very delicate feet and legs. So tiny, it's hard to believe they're real. I  had to be very careful not to break the poor thing in the process of trying to free her. By the way, she seemed to know I was trying to help and not once made an attempt to bite me.

The glue started letting go. In a very short time, I worked the mouse, now covered in baby oil (see picture), out of the trap and into a garbage can from which I had removed the garbage bag. She  immediately began cleaning herself up, but had a long way to go to remove all the oil. I offered to let her stay in the Animal’s Republic for a while, noting that  November in North Dakota, is no time to be a furry creature covered in baby oil trying to survive outside without dying from exposure. She accepted with the idea of being freed once the oil had been worked out of her fur.

Now, most people are familiar with the Republic’s Director of Science and Technology, Vinny Mouse. However, few know he had a sister, Victoria “Vicky” Mouse, who just happened to be the mouse in the trap and now recovering in the Animal’s Republic. Seems Vicky, like brother Vinny, was quite the little scholar. She was actually  in the process of researching glue traps when she got herself into trouble. She seemed to have a knack for trouble.

 Once, after moving in, she found herself evading two cats who were chasing her around my office. Seems these little mice can jump about two feet straight up. With no lid on her tank she decided to do a little exploring and found herself sharing the office with two cats. I came in and chased out the cats and closed the door. I spotted her under my desk and was trying to figure out how to get her back in the tank when  she scurried under the door to my office and into the hall, where the cats were waiting. She lead them on a wild goose chase into my laundry room and disappeared. Lucky she has a fondness for peanut butter. I loaded up a little "have a heart" trap with peanut butter and within a couple hours she was back in the fish tank I had set up for her. I found this a very effective way a retrieving her each of the next three times she escaped. Now whenever I want to clean the tank, I just put the trap in the tank, she runs into it and waits until the tank is cleaned.

Her adventures continued. After she first moved in I put cat liter in the tank for bedding. After a couple days I noticed she was turning pink and there was fur all over her tank. Seems she was having a reaction to the deodorant in the liter and losing all her fur, leaving her in worse shape than she was with the baby oil. Fortunately, removing the liter, quickly reversed the condition and within a week she was growing a nice coat of fur, once again.

About the same time she was losing her fur, General Haggis M. Lee, President of the Republic, noting the little mouse’s courage and tenacity declared her the official Christmas Mouse of the Animal’s Republic. Quite an honor and brother Vinny was very proud. As such, the community of Drayton enlisted her as the hostess for Drayton’s Old Fashioned Christmas. As part of her duties, she has opened her home to the public, streaming live over the internet, while she prepares for Christmas. This also has given us a chance to check out this streaming thing and its reliability, as we prepare to broadcast Old Fashioned Christmas live over the internet.  If you keep checking on her, you might catch her taunting the cats, around which she appears fearless, running in her wheel, snarfing up some peanut butter or hanging from the sides of the tank while she chews her way through the various covers.

 So, that’s the mouse’s story to date. She seems quite at home here for now and will probably hang out here until spring at which time she plans to go on a speaking tour explaining her research and denouncing the evils of glue traps. She fully endorses the “have a heart”trap. However, we both agreed that glue traps are a real bad way to catch a mouse. They can literally tear themselves to pieces in the traps and if they don’t, their deaths are long and slow. A mouse, is a true warrior and prefers the snap trap to all others. Except of course the “have a heart” traps. Mice, which can be very destructive, prefer to die with some dignity. Preferably with a broken neck and a hunk of cheese in their mouths. So, if you’ve got to take them out, remember that.