Animals we saw on our walk this week

Squirrel watching us (especially our dog) from the safety from a tree.

 

 

We went for a walk on a gorgeous fall morning and here are some of the critters we saw.  The squirrel above greeted us at the beginning of the path by posing prettily.  (Either that or it was mesmerized by our slobbering dog that was equally enamored by the squirrel!)  It's been gorgeous weather this fall so far with golden sunshine dappling through the colorful leaves and the animals have been out in full force getting ready for winter.  The squirrels and chipmunks, especially.  I couldn't believe how many walnuts and hickory nuts there were on the ground for them to collect!

Here are some of the black walnuts hanging from tree limbs ready for harvesting by the squirrels and chipmunks.



I don't think this robin had quite woken up by the time we were walking by this morning.

 

When we rounded a bend we came acrossed a picnic table with a bird on top.  We got closer and the bird just sat there.  I don't think this robin had quite woken up on this chilly fall morning.    The swans had, though.  They were already busy taking baths.

A couple other swans shared a log with a slew of sea gulls.  It's nice to see sea gulls on water where they belong instead of in parking lots!  I always see them in parking lots!

There's a section at this park where you are walking on a strip of land between an inland body of water that's really like a shallow pond and on the other side of you is the lake.  When we were on this part of the path we kept hearing big splashes and caught a few glimpses of whales, I mean carp, breaching the water!  They sure are huge!  ...and gross.

All creatures have their place.  They all can't be pretty, right?  The graceful great blue heron helps make up for the carp ugliness!  We walked up on him and he stalked along the path for a spell before relenting and flying off.

So did the mallard ducks, though I think they were disappointed we didn't bring them any food.  They looked like they were expecting it!

In the same spot of the pond we always see these diving birds.  We always forget what kind of birds they are and sometimes when we get home we look it up in our bird book and say, "Oh yeah!  That was it!"  Then we forget again.  Here they are again and I have NO idea what they are called.  They're fun to watch because they dive under water constantly.  I think the male is black with an orange-yellow beak and the female is shades of brown.

Maybe by the next time I will have the name of them figured out!  Cormorants? Hm...

Feeding a week-old white footed mouse orphan with a syringe.

This baby mouse was given to me by a college student that found her in a parking lot next to one of her siblings that had been stepped on.  Her eyes hadn't opened yet but she had fur so I figured she was about a week old.  The student had gotten a box for her from the pet store with some cotton bedding and some kitten formula to give to me. 

I got her home and after warming her up and giving her some homemade pedialyte solution to rehydrate her I was checking her over and saw her scratching herself and realized there were tiny black specks on the white paper towel she was sitting on. 

My husband looked through a magnifying lens and told me she had mites.  Gross!  I have pets of my own and here I have brought mites into the house.  I couldn't stand it that she was helpless and itching like that.  I took a small art paintbrush and dipped it in warm soapy water using mild dish soap and started to brush her with it from head to toe, avoiding her nose, mouth, and eyelids.  I got off between 20 and 30 mites.

It was a little scary because I didn't want her to freeze and I didn't want the mites to get anywhere else in my house!  But the mites were very slow and I was pretty sure I had them contained to the workspace I had going.  They were being smeared onto a white paper towel and I could see where they were and how slow they were moving and often they were dying after the soapy water was on them.  As for keeping the mouse warm, I just kept holding her the entire time in my warm hands and made sure she wasn't getting cold. 

She definitely got soaked!  But she was warm the entire time.  When I was finished and didn't see anymore mites I gently dried her off with a paper towel and put her in an aquarium I had set up with a heating pad underneath half of it so she could crawl to a cooler side if she needed to.  She had dried off quickly and had stayed warm because of the heating pad.  It ended up working very well. 

I fed her with a syringe with a nipple on it as you can see in the photo.  Fed her every 2-3 hours those first few days.  She gained weight fast and did very well.  The formula was half Esbilac, half squirrel formula that I got from the Wildlife rehab organization I'm working with.  I did try using a paint brush since I saw videos online of people using one and I just found the syringe worked better.  The brush did seem easier for the mouse to suckle on but it requires constant dipping which interrupts the whole process.  The syringe, on the other hand, is much messier and easier to get formula on the mouse's nose and put it in danger of aspirating!  Always had little pieces of paper towel handy to dab at a moments notice!


The day after the bath I had gotten some ivermectin spray for birds from the pet store and I sprayed it onto a paint brush and gently brushed that throughout her fur just to make sure the mites were obliterated.  Never saw another one, never saw her scratch again.

In about a week this mouse's eyes opened and was starting to eat solid food.  I mixed oatmeal and crushed cheerios into the formula and that seemed to be a favorite.  Eventually walnuts became her next favorite. 

These were my first bottle baby wildlife rehabs that I fed formula with syringes until they were old enough to be released and were on solid foods.  Here they are at about three weeks of age.  They were orphaned when homeowners captured and released their mother with a live trap in their basement.  The next day the babies came out looking for her.  In the fall the deer mice and white footed mice seek warmth and will often be found inside homes.  They prefer to be outside the rest of the year as they are wild, unlike the house mouse, but they are frequently found in homes in the wintertime.  They are active throughout winter when they are outside, which I was surprised to find out.  They don't hibernate, they slow down their metabolism and sleep a lot.  When the weather warms up enough they go out of their nest to eat weed seeds, berries, whatever else they can find out in the snow. 

I set them free a few days after this photo.  There is a blog post that shows the shelter I released them in.

Scenic views from our visit to the Great Lakes

I had never seen so many minnows in one place before as I did here at this boat dock along Lake Huron.



 

It's so nice to see a beach without a sign of civilization around it.  Just nature the way it's meant to be.  So rare these days.



Completely wild beach up north in Michigan.

 



This was one big rock!

 

 

Before I get into the story of the new orphaned white footed mouse I'm taking care of I wanted to write about releasing my first two orphaned deer mice.

 

When they were definitely older than four weeks and were eating solid foods, hiding from me all of the time, and had started to lose fur because they were over-grooming from either boredom or stress from being in captivity I knew it was time to release them.  It was tugging at me to do it because I know they're pretty low on the food chain and it's getting colder outside but I knew it was best for them. 

 

A rehabber suggested releasing them in a bird house and then going back for it later when it was empty and they had moved on so I could reuse it for the next release.  I didn't want to buy one since money is tight so at first I thought I had a brilliant idea to buy a craft birdhouse for a dollar.  The mice had other ideas about that one.  They wanted nothing to do with that little house.

 

I ended up nailing three scrap 2' x 4's together to make a triangular-shaped tunnel and then blocked most of each end with a smalls scrap of wood so the mice could get in and out but it wasn't wide open for larger animals.  Sealed the seams to help keep them dry.

 

I filled it up with warm bedding that would dry fast and some cheerios, oats, a mouse block, and a few nuts to get them started.  They willingly climbed right into that house!  

 

I read that when you release them they have to get to know their environment to be able to survive so they will have to acclimate, map it out, and get used to it.  I wanted to give them a head start but figured they would be making their own nest somewhere else. At least this would give them a chance.

 

                           

 

I put their house in the woods of a local park that was away from neighborhoods and businesses but there was an abandoned structure very near that looked like a good spot for them to possibly hide out for the winter.  Set the house up near fallen trees and cinder blocks on the forest floor, set a block on top of the house so it wouldn't roll down the hill, and sprinkled some food around near by for them to find. 

 

That bird house they wanted nothing to do with got filled with a cache of nuts and set nearby so they could have a head start for a winter food stash.  Probably needlessly I set a little lid of water out in case they got thirsty, though I imagine a dew drop would have lasted them all day.  Made me feel better.  What can I say. *Shrug.*

 

 

 

And then I walked away.

Looking at these pictures I realize I should have laid some brush over the house for cover.  I'll go back and do that if they are still there and remember to do that next time. 

Update:  I went back to check the house thinking if they were still there I would put some more food out and some cover.  The bedding had been pulled out of the house by an animal.  Maybe a raccoon, maybe a squirrel...I don't know.  I thought the length of the house would be good but I didn't think about how the bedding could be grabbed.  If I ever do that again now I know.  Smaller exit holes, bedding that can't be grabbed.  The separate house with the food in it was empty and the bird house hole had dirt all around it where some dirty paws had reached in and grabbed all of the nuts and cheerios out. 

Just in case the mice were around I put some more food out before I left. 

This spring I went to a class to become a bottle-baby wildlife rehabber.  We learned some basics about baby raccoons, rabbits, squirrels, foxes and more.  Aside from being a lot of fun, I was anxious to get that first call!

Fast forward several months.  I got my certification from the DNR to be an official bottle baby rehabber over the summer but didn't receive any calls until almost October.  When the phone finally rang I was asked if I would take two baby field mice that a family had been trying to take care of once they had live-trapped their mom and then the next day saw the four babies aimlessly wandering around the basement looking for their mother that was now somewhere outside.

Two of the four babies had died by the time they called for help though they did their best.  Of course I said I would take them!  That is where my adventure began...

Well, before my adventure began, my husband reacted differently to the news. 

"MICE!?  They're calling you about baby mice?!  This must be some kind of a test!!!"

:-)

Let me tell you, I have been having SO Much fun with these mice.  I wish I could make money doing this.  I would happily work my heart out doing this.  On top of that, my husband is having fun watching it all, too.  I know he would admit that to me.  I'm not sure if he would admit that to the guys at work, though!

Moving along, I met the family in a public place and they handed me what looked to be two baby deer mice.  (Deer mice and white footed mice are hard to discern.  I'm just making my best guess here based on the research I've done.)  They were in a box lined with leaves and such.  They gave them a nice habitat.  They had been feeding them from the end of a paint brush.

By then I had been set up by an experienced rehabber with squirrel formula, puppy "Esbilac" formula, assorted syringes, nipples, antibiotics, nutrical, mouse food, a recipe for home-made re-hydrating solution, and more.  She set me up not only for these mice but for the squirrels she hoped to pass along to me in the future.

Those first feedings were a little awkward but we got used to each other soon enough and the mice quickly gained weight, energy, and grew like little weeds.  Before I knew it they were weaned and eating formula with broken cheerios or oatmeal or crushed mice food all by themselves. 



One of the orphaned deer mice learning to eat soft solids.  They didn't take too well to being fed with a syringe and quickly preferred eating on their own.  I gave them a smorgasbord to chose from.  I put the dishes in and when I checked back later they would have eaten when I wasn't looking!  They seemed to prefer warm formula over crushed cheerios or oats at first.  First they lapped the formula out of the lids I used for dishes.  (Shown is a lid from a gallon of milk.)  Soon they started to nibble up most of the solids, too.  They grow and change so fast.

I was proud of myself for backing away and letting them be.  I only bothered them to clean their cage or put down fresh food and water.  Other than that, they were on their own.  They learned to hide from me and act like wild mice.  Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to hold them more and watch them up close, act out those maternal instincts and dote on the cuties.  But I knew that they'd be better off if I didn't.  (That's why I was proud of myself!  That was easier said than done!  Sometimes I felt like I was ignoring them then I would remind myself that I was doing them a favor.  They get used to trusting then they'd be swooped up by a predator as soon as their feet hit the ground outside without even a chance.)

During this time I did a lot of Googling about mice.  I learned a lot.  As soon as they were becoming independent I got another call.

"Would you add another baby mouse to your other two?  I just got a call about a baby mouse found in a parking lot next to its sibling that had been stepped on.  Someone picked it up and called us."

Well, of course.  And then there were three.  I'll save that for another post.

Seven baby degus, all in a row! 
How I managed that photo-op, I'll never know.


 

My husband and I are animal lovers.  That can get us into a little bit of trouble.  Not a BAD kind of trouble, mind you.   Just the kind of trouble that leads to having a lot of pets. One night when we were watching television my husband said out of the blue, "We have a house full of heartbeats!" 

I looked around and saw our four cats, our dog, the cage of gouldian finches by the window, and heard the lone degu running on his wheel in the next room.  (The room that also had a king snake, a corn snake, and two red-eyed tree frogs and a fire-bellied toad!  But I digress!)

He had told me about the degu he saw at a small, crowded pet store that week.  It was making the most unhappy, pathetic noises.  He asked the store clerk about it and was told that the little guy was upset because his buddy was sold that day. 

So there he sat in his 10 gallon tank on the floor of the store watching the big feet stroll by as he cried and barked his heart out in pathetic wales.  A water bottle, a food dish, cedar chips, and the degu.

We started doing some research on degus because we really didn't know anything about them other than they kind of looked like a cross between a gerbil and a chinchilla.  We found out they could die of sheer depression when they were housed by themselves because they were such social animals.  We learned some more about them and the next time my husband went to the pet store he bought the  lonely little degu.

Now he's set up in an appropriate cage:  Roomy, made of wire walls for climbing but with a solid floor to avoid bumble foot.  (Bumble foot, we found out, would result from a degu having to live in a cage with a wire floor.)  Hard to find!  Most wire cages have wire floors.  You know where there are some great degu cages?  In the U.K.!  If I were in the U.K.  I would get a cage from John Hopewell.  They have solid floors, unlike most cages similar in the U.S. and they have nice depth to the bottom, unlike the flimsy plastic trays you find here.

We screwed wooden shelves for him to climb around the wall of the cage and hung an exercise wheel from top of the cage that the degu used almost constantly!  We used zip ties to keep the wheel in place.  (The zip ties were in a place the degu couldn't reach to chew.)

Degus can't metabolize sugar.  They're prone to diabetes.  We looked long and hard for a food besides Timothy hay and alfalfa hay.  One that didn't have sugar.  Finally my husband found a hamster food that had all kinds of interesting pieces but no sugar.  No raisins, no syrups, no honey, no added sugar of any kind. 

Once he was all set up we were on the lookout for a buddy for him!  Thinking I could tell the difference between a boy and a girl degu I decided that we actually had a girl on our hands.  We set out looking for another female.  One that was very young so the odds they would be able to live together in harmony were in their favor. 

Surprise, surprise!  After we had our two degu buddies long enough for the littlest girl to grow up we suddenly found out we had a litter of degu babies on our hands!  Silly me.  All I had to do was Google "How to sex a degu" and the image below shows up that clearly shows the difference between a male and female degu.  I would have known we had a male!  It's all just a matter of...spacing!  Not the usual visual cues.  Who knew.

 

It was a lot of fun having the baby degus around.  I wish I would have known enough to tell the difference between a boy and a girl sooner, but hey.  I learned my lesson!  So once the babies grew we took them to our favorite pet store that took great care of their animals, providing them a proper habitat and training their new owners of what kind of care they would need.  They found them very good homes.  One young newly-married couple took all four of the boys, another person took the two girls. 




 

That still left us with the dilemma of having a bonded breeding pair.  Eventually we got it right.  After the second litter we were able to rehome young momma with a couple of her daughters.  Daddy was our original degu mentioned at the beginning of this post.  Sadly, he was older in years and we lost him.  At least he died surrounded by his friends and family with all of the comforts of a good degu home.

We were left with one young male.  It didn't take long to find another young male to be his friend.  To this day they're still happily living together in their big degu house enjoying each other's company.  At first I didn't think I would be able to tell them apart.  It's funny, though.  Eventually you get to know them by how they are different, whether it's subtle differences in appearance or personalities.  The two we have now are easy to tell apart. 

Holding one of our degu babies.

The biggest male loves to run on the wheel.  He practically lives on that wheel!  The smaller one is is momma and daddy's little boy.  When I drape pieces of toilet paper all around the inside of their cage that one will go to town dragging every last square into the corner of the cage to make a nest just like his parents did.  The big one sits on that wheel looking down at his friend working so hard to drag that t.p. around into the corner.  He has no idea why his friend is doing that and he has no inkling to give him a hand.  He just sits back and watches the comical show, as do I.