A merry Christmas to you and your family

A mouse named Bella wishes you a merry Christmas

And so does my new Christmas adoption, Archie.

This was Hell on Earth: callous abuse and egregious neglect of rodents and reptiles.

Say what you want about PETA, but they still do good work where others cannot or will not. For two months, one of their investigators worked at a mill, Global Captive Breeders, that produced reptiles and the rodents that "feed" them.

I put the word in quotation marks because the animals that go for human consumption, as well as those that are rendered for pet food, produce more than enough palatable, nutritious food to feed the reptiles in the pet trade. Breeding and feeding live animals to pet reptiles is inhumane and only serves man's tendency to cruelty, a tendency that we ought not to leave in any legal or moral grey zone. There is no "cycle of life" about it, as I have to repeatedly clarify for people who think it's just fine and dandy for pet cats to kill wild birds, or any such vain indulgences we have for our pets being still part of the ecology. They are not. We are responsible for them. Therefore they are part of our moral sphere. (If you fail to recognize this, you are part of the problem.)

18,000 rats were neglected, drowned, dehydrated, thrown, beaten, shot, suffocated - and the lizards fared no better. Left for dead, and not even disposed of. The video shows it all. Watch it, weep, and do something about it.

When I look at the rats in the video, there is no way I can be cynical about this. They are just like every rat I've ever known - a conscious individual born into the body of a rat with the same hazard that you and I were born into the human race. 18,000 rats at the end of an investigation. 600 reptiles. How many multiples, hundreds of thousands, suffered like so?

I know that almost none of you that read this will go out and take action in your community - identifying the companies that do such things and confronting them about their level of accountability, demanding that they be investigated, insisting that your legal authorities demonstrate that they are doing more than "monitoring the situation" (pretending to take notice until complaints have concrete grounds for conviction, already prepared by volunteer citizens).

So make a donation. Yes, to PETA. Or to any organization brave enough to do the dirty work, the legal work, or both. The people who investigate and end this suffering need support - they need to eat, they need to live with dignity, they need some kind of proof other than social media statements like "I'm sad and outraged" that other people care, because this work is bona fide traumatic, and it shows how much humans suck. Every animal from this Hell was euthanized because their state showed that life was just not worth living - and the cost of bringing whatever few would be able to make it into homes far outstripped funds available. 

Make sure you and the people you know do not buy pets from pet stores. Stores are supplied by commercial suppliers and breeders looking for extra cash. These places — like Mirdot, in Quebec (a cursory search shows they no longer exist, but due to their unsavoury nature, digging might prove useful), whose owner with his wife and children passed by one of Small Victories' fundraisers and did not contribute one red cent — would not be profitable if they treated animals properly.

Do not go to pet shows - I have documentation from the Exotic Pet Show in Montreal that they swept shelters under the rug:

On 26-Mar-07, at 7:34 PM, Expo Exotique wrote:
I am sorry that you feel an ethical dilemma about that. Since this our first year for the Expo congrès we decided that we did not want to give mixed signals to the visitors: On one hand we tell them how amazing exotic animal companions, and on the other we tell them that there is a need for refuges.

Adopt a needy animal, and actively seek them out. All documentation you get from the pet trade tells you to pick the friendliest, brightest-eyed, healthiest looking pet and reject all others. But everyone knows that the bond you form with those who need you most is the one that does you the most good.

If you have pets, then do what people did with their children after last Friday's tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Go home and hug them, spend time with them, because you are fortunate to have them and to share a life worth living.

A warm welcome

Yesterday I checked my blog statistics for the first time in ages. For the longest time, Mooshika was reliably viewed by people in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, and other French-speaking countries (including those in Africa) as a place to obtain information on pet rodents and animal rescue. Realizing "holy crap, that's half my audience!" I made sure to get the major information translated into French - at the time, by friends and rescue colleagues, not Google Translate - so that it would be easier for readers to find what they needed.

Now, I can see more detail than I used to, and of course the United States, Canada (French and English), France, and the UK are among the countries that visitors come from. However, I was surprised to see that Germany had a much higher visitorship than I expected, and China beat out France and the UK by one visit in the past month. So, Willkommen and 欢迎!  (As for the Russians: nastrovia.)

I would also like to welcome two new rat boys into my home: brothers, separated at weaning, one remaining in his original home only because he went on the lam and was hiding in the furniture (yes, yikes!). The other was adopted out by the Ottawa Humane Society, where his sisters are still available, and later returned to a pet store, to be found and reclaimed by his momma's guardian (owner) and turned over to me. The feral one has since been named Dweezil (and a few days after I named him, I passed the nearby Corona Theatre and saw a poster in the window that Dweezil Zappa will be playing here in a few months. Coincidence?). The new boy, who is less feral, will tell me his name soon enough. They are both suspicious of people, with good reason - their mother was a "feeder" rat, abandoned, set loose, and her companions killed. They will hopefully come to have a better opinion of man's dominion through me.

Dweezil, sleek and well-fed, left. His brother, sweet but scared, right.

A mouse in the house

This one here is a young teenager.
There's another on the cuff of the wrist, too.

Today while I was lounging on the couch, doing my work (yes, indeed) I saw a little mouse in my peripheral vision, and turned my head to see that no, I wasn't hallucinating. Sheeee's back! Or he. I knew it, because I could hear the mouse in the wall between the kitchen and bathroom earlier today.

I dropped my hand down to the floor as she approached, and zoom, off she ran in the other direction. She looked exactly like this mouse in the picture, except smaller. These house mice are very tiny, indeed. The adults are the size of the domestic mouse juveniles that I've had the pleasure of keeping as pets.

I do not know how the mice get in, but I know it isn't very often I hear them and less often that I see them, or even evidence of them (a half-eaten cherry tomato or a hole in a bag of bread was the giveaway). Perhaps once a month, with two weeks in June or July being clearly youngster-training season. I've only seen two babies, one time; every other time just one mouse. Still, since May, I have managed to catch three of them - or the same one two times and another the third - and put them outside. That is going to be a lot harder to do, now that winter's almost here.

And so long as they're in the walls, what can be done? I cannot use a sound repeller, as I have two pet rats and a mouse. The pet rats are a mouse deterrent. Keeping my kitchen counter free of bread and other comestibles is helpful. I can also staple down some hardware cloth over the gaps and holes that kitchen cupboards have, where the plumbing and electrical pass through the walls. That will only keep them out of the public space. I'd rather keep the public space open. That way, if I can manage to trap any mice, I can keep them in captivity until spring returns. It's sad to keep a wild animal captive, but I don't want to have mice breeding in the walls if I can help it. I can, at least, give them a good captive environment.

I know this post will send some readers into a tizzy - mice being "vermin" and all - but I've never been one to panic about the boom and bust of population cycles of rodents. If a place isn't kept very hospitable, they will keep moving and not have the opportunity to settle and ruin things for the humans. Moreover I've been thoroughly exposed to most disease vectors, including humans, enough to a) not fear getting sick and b) know what to do if I were to get sick. Besides, Public Health cannot say more than that rodents' possible infectious diseases (leptospirosis, borreliosis, campylobacter, melioidosis, tularemia, plague, rat bite fever, ricketts, scrub typhus, ringworm, pneumonia, protozoans, flukes, roundworms, and cestodes, the list goes on so it's little wonder I've never been sick) are only possibilities and not guarantees. The possibility is, in my 8 years' experience, quite overplayed. Don't come eat at my house if you don't think I'm capable of keeping things clean. Don't eat…or garden, or swim, or do anything…anywhere, for that matter. Unless you are a sensible, well-educated person and realize that immunity is also dependent on exposure.

A sad discovery under my deck

Now that I've posted a happy outcome for animals living under my deck, I now have to post a sad outcome.

A couple of weeks ago, I lifted up the most difficult boards of my deck, which I'd previously been unable to unscrew because of limited time and patience. I was having a party, and I wanted to get the deck and garden in spiffy shape. It was time. In the weeks prior to that, I reported on something having died under the deck. And yes, it had. Here is the initial view:

Upon closer inspection, it revealed that the handsome boy rat I'd seen in my garden earlier this spring - and he was handsome! - had made his home under the boards. To the left you can see the collection of paper and plastic scraps he had collected to line his nest. I find this a charming habit. When I had previously lifted the boards above where the skunk has always lived, there is no such collection of "blankets." Only rats, and perhaps squirrels, do this, as far as I know - birds make nests only when they're fixing to have young.

But in the upper corner, you can see he is not lying in state on his bed. No. And I was sad to see the decomposing body, which I buried with a little prayer. (I am, however, grateful that creatures choose my property as the place to be comfortable and die at.)

Instead, you see that he went to the other corner of his cabin under the deck for his final agonies. And agonies they were, because the turquoise staining you see at the tail end of his skeleton is not mouldy fur, as one might assume. It is the stain of a block of poison. And the little fellow ate a lot of it.

I only made the connection about the poison when my resident squirrels, unwittingly helpful creatures they are, positioned a block of the stuff on top of the fence that they run along to get to my patio balcony. I wondered where that thing that looks like a rock came from until I picked it up with my hands: it was poison. And I'm glad the squirrels only played with or consumed just a little of it, and left it out in the open from wherever they found it. I've put it in a container inside, I don't know what for. Evidence, perhaps. As if I need evidence that someone has decided to "solve" a problem because that is what it has been presented as.

A single rat in the backyard is not a problem. There is lots in nature to take care of "problems." I used exclusion to keep the rat out of my lettuce garden and my composter, where I feared losing my harvest and of encouraging the rodents to procreate. I'm the only one really doing this - composting, gardening, excluding. Maybe more people should compost, garden, and use chicken wire, than assume that the presence of a rat is a problem due to my nefarious habits, and worth causing the suffering that poison causes.

A short story to read: The Rat

My friend Patrick Edwards-Daugherty wrote a book of short stories called "Pet Poems." The cover of it depicts the skeleton of a squirrel. I showed him the skeletal remains of one of my pet rats, and he gave me a copy. Here is one of his short stories, entitled "The Rat." About a slacker guy and his new pet, it has a dry sense of humour about a conflict that makes you root (of course!) for the rat. It takes about 10 - 15 minutes to read, all online at the venerable Ampersand Review. Enjoy!

How to make an emergency evacuation kit for your small animals!

One of my New Year’s Resolutions has been to put my effort where my talk is and really get my household prepared for an emergency - even though no emergency has required evacuation in my lifetime.

I am better prepared than most people in that I have taken the Emergency Sheltering Course offered by Humane Society University. When I was running Small Victories Rodent Rescue, I created this Emergency Evacuation document that small animal households should fill out and put in a prominent place. At my home in Montreal, I posted right above the alarm system console a large index card to help rescuers, my roommates, or tenants evacuate the house of pets and valuables should there be a fire or a flood. Though this year has been one of travel for me and my pets, where much of their equipment is readily available, I could be better organized.

Here are recommendations from Red Rover, a non-governmental organization that specializes in rescue efforts in disaster areas. These recommendations help pet owners prepare for the worst, in order to ensure the happiest endings possible. You can download, print out, and give the information card to people whose pets you care about; if you visit this website, you will find more information about safe, pet-friendly evacation places, the types of disasters, and different tips for different species (including birds and reptiles and amphibians).

As for your own small animal pets, I have taken the liberty of customizing the details for small animal pets such as rabbits and rodents:

Identify evacuation locations

• Find places that can accommodate pets if you evacuate; consider pet-friendly hotels, kennels and/or loved ones
• Write down locations and store them with your disaster kit
• Practice loading your pets into carriers and your vehicle

Microchip your pets – if appropriate

• Microchipping is the single best way to reunite lost pets and families.
• This may only apply to long-lived, outdoor-venturing small animals such as rabbits. Tattooing their ears, a common practice in breeding lines and in rescue communities in some countries, may be a distinct alternative we should consider, as shelter workers may not habitually check rabbits for microchips.
• Update your microchip registration when you move, change phone numbers or get a new emergency contact

Start a buddy system

• Exchange keys with someone who can evacuate your animals if you are not home when disaster strikes
• Give your buddy your pets’ information and your emergency contact information
• Make sure your buddy is comfortable handling your pets

Take photos of you with your pet(s)

• Photos can prove ownership if you are separated from your pets
• Keep copies in your wallet and your disaster kit
• Give copies to a loved one who lives outside of your area
• Storing photos on your cell phone can also be useful

Assemble a disaster kit

• Assemble a kit for each animal in your household
• Use the crate or carrier to hold the kit; obtain a duffel bag that is either small enough to fit into the carrier or large enough to hold the carrier with the pet inside and the supplies outside. Duffel bags are easy to sling the strap over your shoulder in an emergency.   
• Keep the kit near an exit so it is easy to grab in case of an emergency

What to include in your disaster kit:

Food

• A one-week supply in airtight, waterproof containers
• If using canned food (which applies to ferrets, though rats love smoked mussels), include a can opener and spoon
• Rotate food every two months to avoid spoilage

Water

• A one-week supply in airtight, waterproof containers
• Avoid storing in direct sunlight
• Rotate water that you decant yourself every two months to avoid spoilage

First aid/Medication

• Make a basic animal first aid kit (link to a PDF document from the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association) and include a book for your species of pet - the helper may know nothing about rodents and rabbits!
• Any prescription medication your animal may be or have been on
• Flea/tick preventive medication: Powder, ivermectin, or selemectin. Speak to your vet about dosing; many small animal pets take a fraction of the cat or dog dose, which will need to be measured and administered by syringe. Obtain a syringe and syringe cap to reduce waste of the medication; many products will evaporate once the tube is opened. At first use, transfer the tube contents to the syringe and cap it.

Identification

• Printed photos of pets that show any distinguishing features
• Photos of you with your pets
• A harness fitting your small animal (ferret, rabbit) with a “write-on” identification tag for when you get to your destination
• Proof of vaccinations (in case you must board your pet; this only may apply to ferrets, but veterinary checkup papers are very helpful to people who are unfamiliar with small animals)

Animal care supplies

• Crate or carrier
• Food and water bowls (collapsible will save space)
• Blanket, toys and treats
• Fresh litter with litter tray

Cleaning supplies

• Paper towels
• Cleaning solution (Nature Pet, vinegar solution, hydrogen peroxide)
• Baby wipes or pet wipes, which will be necessary for ill pets or cramped conditions.

These tips are also available for download *in English et en français* ici.

Notez bien: On cherche quelqu'un qui pourra bien traduire cette texte en français. C'est trop importante d'attendre longtemps, donc un version de traduction Google était mis en place là.