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.