Yesterday my boyfriend went to use the ATM, and came out saying "there a little wild mouse running around in there." So we went home, I got the humane trap and baited it, and went back. That little mouse, though, is not like our Mus musculus mice. It was far too clever for that trap. It was cowering under a tax guide that someone had propped up in the corner to cover it. I chased and chased and chased it, aided first by a girl in rollerblades (who eventually took them off), an old man, a slightly younger woman with an umbrella, then two of four young ne'er-do-wells, who, in their stoned kind of way, were trying to do well, while the other two stayed outside and watched the amazing technicolor mouse show. I finally looked one in the eye (a hard thing to do when you're trying to keep your eye on a mouse!) and said "Please go to the gas station or the restaurant next door and get a brown paper bag." He offered newspaper but that's not much use, but he came back quickly with the bag. Then the two of us had it in the corner under a table, and he gave it a little scare so it darted right into the bag. It, I should say him. I think it's a he.
He looked like a spiny mouse, and was moving not as fast as I expected a wild mouse to move. He had huge ears and huge eyes, a brown back and a white belly. Like this! So I wondered if he really was wild or a domestic mouse released at a bank. I put him in a cage covered with a towel in my apartment entryway, with water, food, a tube, bedding, and his bag, and left him there overnight.
In the morning a friend who has spiny mice came by, and she said he wasn't a spiny - so I for sure had to find a place to release him. He does not look like a city mouse, as I said, so where could he have come from? Then I thought: through a very complicated intersection just past the gas station, there's Atwater Market, where farmers come and sell their produce to booming business. He may have come in in a bushel of beans, and navigated his way to the bank lobby quite by luck.
This afternoon I took him for a drive down to Verdun, looking for a suitable park, and finally went to the extensive grounds of the Douglas Hospital - a huge area with scattered psych wards and living and working buildings. There was a squishy low-land pool of water that will likely dry up in the summer, with a few Canada geese and mallards whiling away the spring days (my dog Daisy wanted to live up to her nickname "Duck" and join them), and further on, a small woods and bare lot, and beyond that about 100-200 meters, the houses began again. I found a good place, lifted the towel off the cage, and the poor little guy was clinging to the bars looking out. I opened up the cage, and let him go. He ran off and quite quickly disappeared into the surroundings.
A site about rescuing pet rodents and appreciating rodents in general
