Last week, a Seacoast, New Hampshire man showed up at an animal shelter requesting to surrender his pet mice…. more than 600 of them.
"The homeowner brought three large plastic tubs to the NHSPCA on Monday, which combined, produced 73 mice," the NHSPCA reported. "Subsequently, the NHSPCA staff made trips to the home on Tuesday and Wednesday, filling our vans with tubs full of mice.
"The mice were not separated by sex and were reproducing uncontrolled. Many of the females came to the shelter pregnant. By Tuesday morning, more mice had been born. Our current estimate is that there are an approximate 400 still at the man's home, but we may be looking at intaking as many as 1,000 mice in total."
To be clear, these aren't wild field mice that have entered his home uninvited. Rather, they are "fancy mice," the domesticated kind of house mouse. That means they likely won't survive being set free in nature.
"[Other animal welfare organizations in the state] have been offering to take some, which is fantastic because you really want the greater community to be able to absorb this population of pet mice," NHSPCA Executive Director Lisa Dennison said. "No one agency can do this alone. This makes it more reasonable in terms of staffing and volunteers to care for them every day. It's wonderful to watch them leaving us."
From the Union Leader:
As of Monday morning, 18 mice had been adopted from the local shelter while others have been placed in foster care.
Many of the mice are currently up for adoption, but Dennison said there are female mice who can't be adopted yet as they remain on pregnancy watch[…]
Dennison encourages anyone who may be overwhelmed with pets to reach out sooner rather than later.
"If he had gotten to 20 or 30 or 50 and said, 'Oh my God, they're starting to breed out of control and I need help' before it got to be 300, 400, 500, 600, 1,000, we could have helped him gender them and separate them if that was the issue. We could have told him about the breeding cycle," she said.
Previously:
• Scientists make temporarily transparent mice
• Mice, infesting Antarctic island and eating the birds, to be exterminated
• Photo of mice brawling on a subway platform wins wildlife photography award
