I’ve been thinking lately. Thinking about mice.
I’m presently the owner of two very adorable, very strange mice. I spend my days absorbed in behaviour studies, fascinated by their strange rodent rituals and complex social structure. Perfect, the long-haired black and white one, is clearly the more active, dominant mouse. She’s slightly skittish, and loves to poke in the various nooks and crannies of my jeans. Paragon, the gold and white one, is her bitch. She is highly subservient to Perfect, and when let out of her cage is quite content to snuggle up my sleeve and wash herself. Whenever I take one out of the cage and not the other, Perfect immediately runs over to Paragon and gives her a thorough sniffing, which Paragon casually submits to. It’s very clear who wears the pants.
I didn’t always have mice. Once upon a time I had up to twenty hamsters at the same time. In school I was nigh unto infamous for my tailless rodents; in junior high I was called “that weird hamster girl”, and rumors abounded about me and my hamsters. I have been asked if I eat hamsters, set them on fire, use them for inappropriate intimate practices, employ them in Satanic rituals, and so on. I used to be highly sensitive on the subject of animal abuse; now I just reflect them with a snide, clever barb thrown in return.
Despite my long association with them, I cannot ascribe any peculiar level of sentiment to hamsters, or recommend them to others. They’re not exactly the best pets for anyone, and have a number of factors to their detriment.
As you may or may not know, the vast majority of golden hamsters are descended from a litter of twelve plus mother exported from Syria in 1930. Of that twelve, only four pups survived to maturity. Now, think of all the color and coat varieties available in goldens. Doubtless a huge amount of inbreeding had to take place to get this variety. Golden hamsters are about the most inbred animals you could possibly obtain, and I include the common garden six-toed kitten in that generalization. As a result of this massive influx of inbreeding, hamsters are stupid. Very stupid. Hamsters are the Mortimer Snerds of the animal kingdom. I have personally seen a hamster charge at top speed directly off of a three-foot high surface onto the concrete floor. I have seen one hamster in particular (Max, a beautifully groomed but painfully stupid grey long-haired) sit and stare, one paw on the glass, for upwards of an hour at a stretch. And most of this time was spent facing a wall. Max went on to have a daughter that, in a single night, chewed her way through two telephone books placed on top of her wire cage. But I digress...
Dwarf hamsters are not much better. While I have a preference for them over goldens, they have their drawbacks too. Although not as lacking in the intelligence department (not being as inbred), dwarfs can be mean. Whereas goldens are generally amiable to humans and hostile among themselves (attempting to keep a pair of nonrelated, and especially different sexed goldens will inevitably result in either or both hamsters being killed or maimed), dwarfs are sociable with each other to an extent, but will attack any human within striking distance. Goldens cause the most damage when they bite (I have a permanent scar from waking up my female golden, Pickles), but dwarfs will bite more often and are more venomous in their willingness to attack. They’re less predictable, and far less safe for children. Dwarfs can be nasty little sons of bitches, and I’ve had several that I could only take out of the cage with a washcloth or other suitable protection.
In comparing the two species, I often use dogs. Goldens are like the proverbial Golden Retriever: dimwitted and happy-go-lucky, usually placid, obedient and gentle to everyone, but highly dangerous if they do attack. Dwarfs are like terriers: they’re smaller and cause less damage, but they put up a hell of a fight and are not friendly to strangers.
After the last hamster (a male dwarf named Hershey) died, Mom made me swear up and down never to get another rodent as long as I lived in her house. A few months later, DC’s mice had two litters of pups (or whatever you call baby mice). She gave me a pair of females, and I kept them without Mom’s knowledge for a couple of weeks. Mom nearly flushed them when she found out (she’s afraid of mice), but I did manage to stall enough to have them on a permanent basis. It has been through keeping my mice that I learned of their innate superiority to hamsters:
1. Mice are not aggressive. My girls are extremely gentle, though not timid. They are friendly and playful, and get along disturbingly well. How so? Well, I was in for a bit of a shock shortly after I acquired them, when I caught them having sex (and yes, they’re from separate litters. At least it’s not incest...). It’s mildly strange, but they get on together well, and it’s better than having a pair of constantly fighting (or worse, cannabalistic) dwarfs in a cage. Yes, I have had adult dwarfs methodically kill and eat their adult siblings (a particularly bloodthirsty female named Benjy springs to mind). It ain’t pretty. Compared to that, I’ll take the lesbian mice.
2. Mice are not stupid. Since they come from a much wider gene pool, they’re not nearly as inbred (yes, a certain amount of inbreeding comes into play with fancy mice, but they’ve been around so long it would be like marrying your 17th cousin nine times removed. In other words, no biggie). The lack of inbreeding naturally benefits their intelligence. Where hamsters will gaily run headfirst off of a deep chasm, mice will stop, check the edge, sniff, and if it’s not within crawling distance, back off to explore their options.
3. Mice are not prone to escaping. Speaking as someone who’s had easily a dozen or so hamsters just walk off into the sunset and never be heard from again, this is a definate bonus. Mice are not driven to escape as hamsters are, and it’s a relief not to hear the constant grating noise of metal grinding against teeth in a desperate attempt to visit the world beyond four glass walls. My girls have never even so much as shimmied up their water bottle and poked a nose against the wire.
4. Mice are not territorial and hostile towards their own kind. I’ve seen goldens--siblings raised together--attempt to kill each other after being seperated for a single day. I’ve seen dwarfs subsequently kill and eat their offspring, their mates, and their siblings. I’ve had entire litters reduced to clumps of fur-covered gore when so much as a tap on the cage upsets the dam. Whereas a male and female mice, and pairs or groups of females, will get along just fine, no matter when they’re introduced (apparently pairs or groups of male mice is still a no-no; the territorial rule stands there). Mice are social animals who thrive in group settings; placing a lone mouse in a cage is nearly tantamount to torture.
5. Mice do not stuff and hoard food. Mice have fast metabolisms; they only take what they can eat, and they can eat a lot in a short amount of time. When a hamster is given a treat--anything, doesn’t matter what (I once had a golden try to stuff my finger in her cheek pouch), it will promptly stuff the item, and then, if placed back in its cage, trot over to its enormous pile of already fermenting food, lovingly place the tidpit in the pile, and trot back to its sleeping quarters for a well-deserved 16-hour beauty nap. Which brings me to...
6. Mice are not nocturnal. Yes, they will spend an inordinant amount of energy at night, but they are also active in the day. Whereas hamsters (especially goldens) are dead to the world until dusk. Hamsters need a certain amount of time in their lives devoted to sleep, or it will quite literally shorten their lifespan. They reach a virtually coma-like state in their sleep, especially in the winter during hibernation. One particularly beloved hamster of my sister’s gave her quite a fright. Cricket had one of those big hamster palaces with tubes slithering every which way, and one tube led to a little loft with a flip-top lid that he slept in. Now, you have to understand, Cricket was a special hamster. He was friendly, and gentle, and smart (for a golden). He would answer to his name, even when sound asleep. You just had to say it, and he bolted awake with a quizzical expression. One time he didn’t respond, and Sally opened the loft. He remained stationary. She took him out, and he was cold and limp to the touch. Panicked, she went and showed him to me and Mom. We were in the middle of expressing our grief at his departure, when he literally jumped so suddenly she nearly dropped him. He had been hibernating so deeply, he appeared dead.
7. Mice have sparkling personalities. Okay, so this one may be a tad subjective. Let’s face it though, meanness and stupidity don’t do much for one’s personality, and in that respect mice have hamsters beat paws down. I’ve had hamsters for years that never showed the level of liveliness, personability, cleverness, and good old fashioned charm that my mice have displayed in spades. I don’t know whether it’s the fact that they’re social animals, and it’s always more fun to see interaction between pets or what, but the girls are absolutely delightful to hold, or to merely observe. I’ve never had a pet that I could just sit for hours and watch. Yes, I’ve had fish, but unless you hold biological degrees in ichthyology, fish display the social structure and personality traits of so many rocks. They’re soothing to watch, but not much in the interaction department.
So as you can see, mice are far superior to hamsters in a number of ways. In fact, so far the only disadvantage I can find in mice are their by-products. Hamsters are of course from a desert environment. To conserve water, they tend to have very few droppings, and in fact often eat their own waste (disgusting, but it has its advantages). Mice don’t have the need to conserve like hamsters do, and they also have a very fast metabolism, leading to a tremendous amount of by-products, which in addition has a very strong, distinctive (and unpleasant) odor. To put it plainly, they shit like crazy, and they stink. Anyone who’s had a mouse pee on your clothes can attest to the staying power of their urine. I work at a drycleaners, and it took several washings to remove the smell out of my lavender hoodie. Fortunately I chose females (at DC’s suggestion), because as aromatic as my little darlings can be, they have nothing on the pure acrid smell of male mouse pee. It’s one of those smells that, once you experience it, you never forget. Even their light bouquet of femininity is enough, and if I don’t clean the cage once a week like clockwork, you can smell them across the room, and if it is not caught in time, it will permeate the entire house, and can never be completely banished. It’s worse than cat pee, in its way, because it’s more insidious.
You’re probably wondering why, after listing all the advantages that mice have over hamsters, why I ever raised hamsters in the first place, and never simply kept mice. Good question! The main reason is, my mom hates mice. She grew up around horses in barns, and they would have immense rats in the stalls, rats that could climb straight up sheer concrete in the blink of an eye, rats that measured two feet long sans tail, rats who could have posed for pamphlets on the dangers of rabies. Really nasty, vicious, aggressive rats. And the mice weren’t much better, being slightly smaller than a Netherland Dwarf rabbit (that’s about 10 inches in length) and equally nasty, plus the smaller size meant they could sneak into smaller openings, chew tiny holes in the grain bins without anyone seeing and nest in stalls. Mom equated “rodent” with “evil”, and it was hard enough convincing her to let us get hamsters. She only consented because of their lack of tails...they weren’t quite so “rodentlike”.
The other reason is, well, hamsters are flat-out more physically appealing. Let’s face it: They’re cuter. Especially dwarfs, with their little round bodies and short, twitching pink noses, the little beady eyes squinting just before they strike for a vital artery. Who couldn’t look at that tiny, cuddly mass of grey fur ravenous for the taste of blood, and not just go “Awwww”?
12/30/02: Author’s note: DC recently paid a visit from Canada, and saw Perfect and Paragon. She proclaimed them to be “thriving” and “in perfect health”, much to Mom’s disappointment. Apparently, although they are nearly a year old, they display the appearance and activity level of six-month-old mice. DC predicts they will live at least a year or two longer than average mice. Yay! :)