Mouse Tales

Yeah, they're cute.

I just had to pick Sooty and Sweep up by hand to get them into another tank while I cleaned their one out, and they were NOT happy about it; they kept trying to climb the walls and squeaked whenever I nearly got them. Them getting too tame is one thing I certainly don't have to worry about.
When I picked up adult wild mice in my mammal trapping course, they struggled and tried to turn around a bite me, but once I'd actually got Sooty and Sweep by the scruff, they just relaxed and curled up their tails like they would if their mother had them. I suppose I'll know when they're ready to go because they'll stop doing that.
I had a quick check, and they are both boys.

I'll be releasing them at a park that my mum manages, where there aren't any cats

new photo!

One of them escaped last night when I was cleaning them out, and the other one kept running around looking for it, and it seems to have spent all of last night trying to burrow out of the tank, so I let it go today.

They'd built themselves a little nest out of hay and paper, so I shoved that under a bush right up against a wall that's covered in really thick ivy, and so is the ground around that bit, so there's lots of cover for them. I scattered a load of the mouse food and bread around the ivy so they can get used to foraging.

I put a load of old fence posts along the wall by my back door, so that area is no longer a giant mouse trap with nowhere for them to hide, and the cat now has a curfew. She isn't allowed out at dawn or dusk, when mice are active. She projectile expressed her opinion of this on the living room carpet.