Have you ever found an injured animal while out for a walk and wondered if you could help? In July this year, we were out in the local woods when my Mum ahead of me suddenly screamed and leapt backwards. With no idea what sheād seen, we hesitantly peered around her and saw that her squeal had been one of fear for the tiny mouse she had been about to tread on but had thankfully managed to avoid. Poor little thing was large enough to be fully furred, but with teeny tiny ears and eyes most definitely still firmly shut. Normally, I would never have dreamed of moving it for fear of causing the mother to abandon it, but this time that clearly wasnāt an issue as the tiny baby was still trying to suckle from her, despite being clearly dead.
So what did we do? Carried them home of course, in the small bag normally filled with dog treats and poo bags. Canāt say carrying a dead mouse in a bag around my waist is an experience I fancy repeating too often, but I didnāt want the little one to panic too much at being carried in the dark. Once home, after a lot of Google searches we decided that the best thing to do was to try and keep the baby warm and feed her on kitten milk. [NOTE: if this ever happens to you, the best thing you can do is get it to a wildlife rescue centre! They will have the knowledge, equipment and proper nutrition that the baby needs. Being under COVID-19 lockdown, we didnāt have that luxury.
Turns out, not a huge fan of kitten milk! After a few failed attempts to feed her with a tiny syringe we have for measuring out the dogās arthritis medication, we opted for dipping a paintbrush in it for her to suckle the milk out of. This worked for a few days, but when she opened her eyes 3 days later, telling us she was now 13 days old and another 10 days from weaning, she declared then and there that she did NOT want milk anymore (my cat was VERY happy to oblige in dealing with the excess!). Every attempt to get liquid into her failed, and while we were worried about giving her solid food too early, we resorted to soaking digestive biscuit crumbs in water and kitten milk, and making her some very milky porridge, just to make her take anything at all.
And the resultā¦? A very fat little mouse! She grew very fast, and remarkably, after another 3 days, suddenly decided that we were terrifying and went from being easily handled to impossible to pick up or keep hold of. While in some ways this only made it even more difficult to feed her, it made us much more confident that releasing her back to the wild was the right thing to do ā even if she didnāt survive, she would have had a chance, and she definitely wouldnāt have been happy as a domestic mouse.
Over the next few days, she continued to refuse to drink, but at no point did she ever show any signs of dehydration so we kept feeding her, slowly moving from porridge to all types of grasses, seeds and fruits that we found outside. Several times we went along the field where we found her and collected everything that seemed edible from there. While we rarely saw her eating them, she definitely learned how to make herself a little nest in them, and continued to grow without us supplementing her diet with anything extra... Though digestives and peanut butter were her favourite right up until the day we took her back to the spot where we found her, released on the other side of the hedge from the footpath in the hopes that she might be a little safer.
We named her Oatkin, and every time we walk that path we call out a little āHello Oatkin!ā and imagine that somewhere in the brambles, thereās a happy little mouse munching on the grass heads, and enjoying her life in the wild.
Thatās the full story of Oatkin, but if anyone is in a similar situation, here are some tips that Iāve gained from the experience:
- If you can, get the baby to a rescue centre where they can care for it properly.
- Paintbrush feeding is definitely easier than a syringe, but whatever you do donāt give them a bowl ā theyāll knock it over and it will be a pain to clean up, and more importantly they can drown in it very easily. We also found just sitting a little pool of it on our palms and letting her walk through it worked quite well, even if just to make her wash herself and in doing so lick the liquid off her feet.
- We thought oat milk would be quite a good nutritional supplement for a mouse, but apparently not ā better than water, but kitten milk is the best substitute weāve got. Make sure it is warmed when you feed them, and try to massage their belly after feeding.
- Be VERY careful about feeding them solids, and donāt leave them alone with solid things to eat until theyāve been eating it for several days. There were some very scary moments where she was clearly choking on the food, and it was only through us constantly changing her position and forcing her to move around that she was able to dislodge whatever it was that was making her gasp and gagā¦ Feed them upright, and if they appear to be choking, just keep tilting your hand so they are at different swallowing angles, and massage their belly afterwards.
- They need to be warm (but not too hot ā theyāre very prone to dehydration) and will need feeding and every few hours, including at least once per night. I tended to feed and warm her (I sat the box she was in on top of a freshly heated wheat pillow) at 11pm, then again at 3am, and when I got up at 7am, and then every 4 hours throughout the day.
- Try not to get too attached ā Oatkin was extremely cute, and definitely became my baby for the fortnight (much to the catās annoyance ā he definitely didnāt understand why he was suddenly not allowed in my bedroom!), but no matter what you do there is a significant chance they wonāt survive without their mother, and if they do then theyāre definitely better off in the wild where they can be real mice.
GOOD LUCK!
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