The Past Four Months

Four months have gone by since I have posted. What has happened in that time? Even with the medical maize I found myself in and canceling most plans for the summer, still, a lot of fun things happened.

We released our Isabella moth. Mikaela made a little comfort spot to ease its adjustment back into the world. We watched it for almost an hour waiting for it to fly off. Mikaela talked to it and offered words of encouragement. We watched and waited. When we turned our backs, it flew away.





Nigel celebrated his first birthday on April 9th.


Mikaela and Nigel, wild explorers of the garden.





Loving our backyard swing!




Harry, the mouse in our rodent relocation program had his own relocation plans. We enjoyed his company during the late winter. I could make a clicking sound and he would pop up from under his nest and wait for me to feed him. One morning I walked by his cage very early in the morning (I have many sleepless nights) to see him sitting in front of his cage instead of inside his cage. I stood very still and watched his antics. He ran around his cage several times and scratched his head against the plastic edge of it. He then climbed up the glass I kept next to his cage to refill his water. He splayed his legs out across the rim and splashed each foot in the water and slid back down the glass. He climbed up again and slid back down. He had created his own playground. After spending time with Harry it will be hard for me to deny that rodents have personalities, wants and desires and play. (Watching Ratatouille has also perhaps influences me recently) Mice have very poor eyesight but he must have know I was there or sensed something because he would run back and forth along the edge of the shelf and then lean out over the edge so far with his nose twitching and his front feet pawing the air, that I thought he was going to jump onto me. I then discovered that Harry had created a second home nearby in my Tibetan singing bowl. It was filled with fluff from tissues and one of Mikaela’s socks. I opened the door to his cage, put food inside and he hopped right in. I removed the singing bowl and never saw Harry out of his cage again. It was curious. Had we left the door open once? Could he really come and go whenever he wanted through some mysterious opening? It is pretty unbelievable, if that were true, that he actually chose to live in and around the cage I put him in instead of taking off to wherever he used to live. When it came time to release Harry back into the wild I choose Ridley Creek State Park. Michael refused to get out of the car saying this was highly illegal. Michael, it is only a mouse! Carrying Harry’s cage, Mikaela and I went into the woods near a picnic area (food for Harry). Here comes a car, Michael yelled. I suddenly felt I was on a secret SWAT mission and should have worn camouflage. Mikaela and I created a little spot near a hollow log, left a pile of his favorite food (sunflower seeds) and some of his bedding. When we opened the cage and uncovered his little bed, we discovered he was NOT THERE. We drove all the way to Ridley Creek with an empty cage. Damn mouse! He was snuggled in his bed a half hour before we left. He was either still in the house or… in Michael’s car. Although I left food in the spot where Harry’s cage had been in our house, it was never eaten and he was never seen again. If we catch another mouse in our Have-a-Heart trap it goes straight to Chester with Michael. I can’t believe how much time I have spent writing about a rodent!

Chester County Hospital Fair





I love people watching





Lots of time for reading.




It has been ten months since we received the referral for Yaebsira. Eight months since I held her in Addis and promised her I would be back soon to pick her up. We continue waiting and hoping, sometimes feeling like dreamers, sometimes feeling like crusaders.

This update only covers May. Sometimes it is amazing all that happens when you feel as though nothing is going on.

Change

From now on, when I lament that change is hard I will think of the woolly bear caterpillar. If in a week’s time a little creature can go from this




To this



What change am I capable of if I set my mind to it? What wild transformation am I capable of?
In early November Mikaela and I saw a woolly bear climbing up the side of our house. We brought him inside and looked up woolly bears on the web and found a site that gave a very brief explanation of how to bring them inside for the winter and then watch them make a cocoon in the spring. We decided to try it. We made a container and fed our caterpillar grass until he curled up into a ball on the bottom. Hibernation and death look a lot alike. Over the winter we would look at him unmoving and curled up in the bottom of our container. Had we cared for him correctly? Was he protected enough from the winter? We would forget about him and then remember and brush the snow off the container and observe his curled body. Frankly, I wasn’t holding out much hope. And then at the end of March, he was climbing up the stick again! We were so pleased! Mikaela started feeding him grass again. We fed him for almost a week when we saw he was at the top of the stick and not moving again. Overnight a thin web covered his body. The next day the covering was brownish orange like his little body. It looks as if all his woolly fur came off him and transformed into a blanket to cover him. When you hold the cocoon up to the light you can see his shrinking body. It feels truly miraculous. In a little more than a week’s time he will be an Isabella Tiger Moth. What an accomplishment!
How does it know it is ready for change?
Did it resist climbing up the stick telling itself, well maybe tomorrow, tomorrow I will change?
Did it curl up in its cocoon saying, oh god, I can’t do this? This is too hard and scary.
How will I change today?

Waiting

Waiting

Our second court date for Yaebsira is today. We are waiting for a phone call or an email from our agency. Waiting to find out if I legally have one daughter or two. Waiting to find out if I am a mother of two children or three. It is afternoon in Ethiopia. In my heart I am her mother. I want to be able to post pictures of her. Oh please call me and say, yes, yes, she passed court. Yes we can fly to Ethiopia to bring her home. How do you wait for such news? So far I have done the dishes, stared at unimportant emails and tried to write an article for the OC news about Temesgen’s adoption. I was unable to write anything. I am good at staring off into space. While waiting I will post some recent pictures of Nigel Temesgen and Mikaela and hope that I can follow them with pictures of Yaebsira. I can not legally post any pictures of her until she passes court. With Ethiopian adoption you first get a referral for a child and you accept it. Which we did, of course. Then MOWA (Ministry of Women’s Affairs) has a court date to check that all paperwork is in order. Having Nigel home is proof that our paperwork is in order. He passed on the first court date. Yaebsira’s first court date failed. We were told by our agency that there was one missing signature and she will surly pass the second time. So here we are on the day of the second court date waiting. Waiting. I have met her, played with her, hugged her, kissed her. Her pictures are all around our house. She is already my daughter in my heart.


Life is sweet


snuggles



That after-bath glow!


beautiful dreamers


Sweet little feet



Drool monger


Good friends



My happy boy



Chef Nigel



Always exploring



A girl's best friend



Uhm... maybe this would be a good way to keep him safe... He seems to like it...



Ready for Spring!



Finally, Michael has a hockey fan in the family!! Thanks Meg, for the great jacket.



The Damn Husband and Nigel. I hope I get to post the picture of him kissing Yaebsira.



Happy and carefree at OC



Mikaela preparing for Earth Hour.



A spooky Earth Hour photo. Wish I had a tripod. I had a vision of what a wonderful time we would have during Earth Hour. We were going to have a fire and hang out and have fun as a family. Well, not quite the way we planned... It was too wet and the fire kept going out and was very smoky. Nigel was exhausted and bad tempered. I ended up going inside and putting him to bed. My lantern went out so I changed him in the dark. i was doing pretty well until my chest and neck were suddenly very wet! Thanks buddy!! We both went to bed crabby. Mikaela and Michael ended up having a good time finding tons of earthworms by the glow of their flashlights.



Why is there paper all over the floor? Ah, because my recycling bag has become a mask of course!!


"I have to go outside. I have work to do", Mikaela said. And when I turned around this is what she looked like. Ready for work!


Some days just don't go the way you want them to. This is the email I just received:
Sorry--April 13th, it was reassigned.
I don't know why at this point, just got an email and haven't spoken to anyone yet. May be as simple as power outage which is causing problems already this year. Don't worry, she will come home!
Grace
After trying to get a grip and stop crying I go tell Michael who hugs me and heads out to work. Sorry babe. I tell Mikaela. "That's ok mommy. Now we will have more time to prepare. We don't have enough kitchen chairs. We will have to get another one before she gets here. I have to go feed my horse." She skips away. Why can't I be as resilient? Now what do I do?
wait.

The rodent relocation program

We have started a rodent relocation program of sorts in our house. We live in southeastern Pennsylvania and our 200-year-old house is a fond nesting spot for many small creatures. I truly can't stand killing anything (okay, not true, ticks are fair game) so we catch them in traps and release them somewhere far away from our house. Our traps are small grey and plastic- they tip when the mouse goes in shutting the door behind them so I have never had a chance to see what we were catching. When we release them, they don't stick around to be observed. Our gerbil died a while back so my daughter and I got the idea of releasing a prisoner into the gerbil cage to see what we caught. Turned out to be a deer mouse. Mikaela immediately named him (her?) Harry. So for a few days we thought we would watch and check out his antics. As unhomeschoolers we can find nature and science everywhere we turn. We were surprised at how brave he is. He comes right up to the edge of the cage and watches us. He will then perform an array of stunts that include running wildly around the cage and hanging upside down from the bars and then comes back to look at us as if to say, so are you impressed? (Of course he could also be saying Let me out of this freaking cage!) My daughter likes to stuff part of a tissue through the bars at night before she goes to bed to see that he has pulled the whole thing in and shredded it to expand on his nest by morning. So, science aside, we have now grown found of this little guy who seems to perform for us. Although we have signs of spring everywhere we turn (the snowbells are out!) we are wondering if we relocate Harry to a park near us if he will be able to survive and find other deer mice buddies when it is still dipping into the thirties at night. I started to research deer mice on the web and found Rob Sandelin’s nature web site. I’m in love with this guy! His writing is wonderful. I want to follow him around for a while so I can experience all the nature he sees that I surely pass by. When I read his 2005 nature notes about putting a vole in his pant pocket I knew I had found the guy to ask. A guy who puts a vole in his pant pocket might understand our dilemma and have some more info. When I read his 2008 notes about how he held a baby deer mouse in his hands to warm it up, I knew I had the right guy. Below I have copied his field notes that pertain to deer mice. We still had a few more questions so I emailed him. We are also curious about how far an average deer mouse can travel and find his way home. You know where I am going with this one! We love Harry but when we set him free we really don’t want to see him again!



From Northwest Natural History by Rob Sanelin

End of September 2005 field notes
As the nights cool off some of the rodents from outside are keen to find a warmer spot and look for ways to squeeze into your house. House mice are quite numerous and can squeeze into cracks only 1/3 of an inch thick, the only limiting factor they have is how wide their little skull is. House mice and deer mice are prolific breeders, both can have 5 or more litters a year, thus one female might produce 35 or more of her kind. Since both species become sexually mature at about a month old, the mouse math quickly goes exponential. Thankfully, mice are sort of the lunchbox of the predator world and mice can only breed in relation to food supply, which varies.



April 2006 field notes
The first annual broods of deer mice are curled up together, their hairless pink bodies huddled in a mousey ball for warmth. These babies will be out of their grass and moss lined nest in about three weeks, providing food for the variety of predators that depend on their prodigious reproductive rates. At six weeks of age a female can become pregnant, and if she should live so long, she could be a great-great grandmother by fall. Populations of tiny rodents can have a large impact on what kinds of plants might grow in an area. Seedling plants offer high nutritional values and are often primary food resources for rodents. If the rodent population is high, and rodents prefer maple seedlings, then maples may not succeed in getting any of its seedlings large enough to where such predation is less effective. In an enclosure study done on the Olympic Peninsula, Deer mice ate every single Cottonwood and Big-leaf maple seedling in the enclosure. The ebb and flow of populations flux from year to year and decade to decade. So perhaps if owls and weasels decline, the mouse population increases, and maple trees might decline. Or, perhaps the very existence of maple trees is an artifact caused by a temporary population bloom of weasels many years ago which repressed the rodents long enough that the trees could grow beyond their reach. The landscape we see today was shaped by forces of several years ago and we can only guess at why things are the way they are.




April 2008 field notes
The deer mice are having babies and I rescued a mouseling that was wet and cold by putting it in my pocket. The warmth of my hands around it brought it back to alert activity so I set the squirmy tyke down at the edge of the wood, said my goodbye and good luck and then walked a few paces to a sunny spot to sit and listen to birds. I walked back uphill and then felt a tickle on my ear which was my mouse, who had climbed up the back of my coat as I sat. The little mouse was quite fearless and I was sorely tempted to keep it as a pet, but it is often no favor to captivate wild animals, and so I placed my mouse into a pile of Douglas fir cones and then strode quickly away, although I spend the day looking over my shoulder. It’s a big dangerous world for young mice and only a few will make it through the summer.



Deer mouse Peromyscus maniculatus

Identifying Features: Distinct boundary between white underside and brown top, tail white underneath, brown on the top.

This is perhaps one of the most numerous animals in our area, yet few people ever see them. They are found in all habitats from the sandy beaches of the ocean to mountain alpine meadows, although they are most numerous in forests. They eat a wide variety of foods including seeds, fungi, berries, and plant material. They also chew fallen bones, antlers and skulls to get the calcium. Deer mice will have their first brood in February, and a female can breed again within days of giving birth and can have up to 5 litters of young in a year. Each litter is typically 4-5 young but if food resources are plentiful she may have up to 9. Her first litters of young can also have litters in that same year and so if food supplies were without limit, one mouse could produce hundreds.

Deer mice make nests of moss, grass or other soft plant material on dry, well-drained areas. Each nest is only used once then abandoned, and these empty nests are sought after by bumblebee queens in the spring who renovate the mouse nest and use it to raise their own young.

This small animal is a prime food item for all the local predators and they are readily consumed by weasels, hawks, owls, coyotes and even crows.



So I am caught up in the sweet world of nature that Rob has offered to me. I am thinking of The Tale of Despereaux, the heroic mouse that reminds me of Harry…
And then I imagine my sister, Barbara, reading this blog entry with eyes wide with the fear of germs, diseases. Am I crazy? Yes I might be. So I type in a google search for Deer Mice and immediately an option comes up for Deer Mice Diseases that I had previously ignored. I was thinking about ticks and how baby ticks feast on mice first and then grow to more ambitious meals of deer and us. This site doesn’t even mention ticks. Suddenly the world Rob has created transforms into a much more ominous vision with none of Rob’s writing flair.

First some mouse facts from Pest Control Canada


Mouse Facts

* Mice travel over their entire territory daily, investigating each change or new object that may be placed there.
* Mice have poor vision, hence their activity patterns rely heavily on smell, taste, touch, and hearing.
* Mice use the long sensitive whiskers near the nose and hairs on the body as tactile sensors. The whiskers and hairs enable the mouse to travel in the dark, adjacent to walls in burrows.
* Mice also have an excellent sense of balance, enabling them to walk along telephone wires, ropes and similar thin objects.
* Mice are excellent jumpers, capable of leaping at least 12 inches vertically.
* Mice can jump against a flat vertical surface using it as a spring board to gain additional height.
* They can run up almost any vertical surface; wood, brick, weathered sheet metal, cables, etc.
* They can easily travel for some distance hanging upside down.
* Although they are good swimmers, mice tend to take to water only if left with no other alternative.
* Mice are basically nocturnal in nature.
* House mice breed throughout the year and can become pregnant within 48 hours of producing a litter.
* There are usually about 6 mice to a litter and females may produce as many as ten litters (about 50 young) per year.
* It takes 18 to 21 days for gestation, and 35 days for a mouse to mature. Most mice live anywhere from 15 to 18 months.
* They make their nests out of the same types of soft materials as rats, and as many as 3 females may use the same nest.
* They commonly nest in insulation in attics, also in stoves and under refrigerators.
* Mice do not travel far from their nest, about 12 to 20 feet.

This would explain how they mange to around in my kitchen.

And then they share the dangers of feeding the birds (Is nothing safe?):

The most common rodent attractant in urban locations is wild bird seed. Once a constant food source has been detected, rodents will leave pheromone trails for their family members to follow. This could result in a large populations being attracted to your home or business. An abundant supply of food will also speed up their reproductive cycle. Most people who feed wild birds don't realize they are probably feeding more rodents than birds. Pet food, grass seed and poorly stored human food are other attractants.

And it gets worse. Ewww:

* In six months, one pair of mice can eat about 4 pounds of food and during that period produce some 18,000 fecal droppings.
* Deer mice are a primary vector of Hantaviral infections which cause hemorrhagic fevers.
* Mice may infect food with their droppings transmitting such organisms as salmonella and the microscopic eggs of tapeworms.
* Mice transmit disease in a number of ways including biting, infecting human food with their droppings or urine, indirectly via the dog or cat and bloodsucking insects.

The most common way mice transmit disease organisms is by contaminating food with their droppings and/or urine. The most threatening organism spread by mice is Salmonella, a cause of food poisoning, spread via droppings. Other transmittable organisms include tapeworms via droppings, rat-bite fever via bites, infectious jaundice/leptospirosis/Weil’s Disease via urine in food or water, a fungus disease (Favus) of the scalp either by direct contact or indirectly via cats, plague and murine typhus via fleas, Rickettsial pox via the mite Liponyssoides sanguineus (Hirst), lymphocytic choriomeningitis via droppings, and possibly poliomyelitis (polio). Another problem is house mouse mite dermatitis which is caused by these mites when they feed on humans.


Harry is not looking as cute as he was before. And now they ruin the happy thoughts I have about our rodent relocation program by sharing that deer mice have an incredible ability to track back to their nest and can travel very large distances to do so. They conducted a large study tracking mice that they captured and released:


50% of deer mice in that study returned to their home sites (a short-grass prairie habitat).

The mice traveled 650 m to 1,980 m (mean 1,500 m) and had to cross a river and pass optimal habitat patches to reach their home sites. Deer mice with previous homing experience were more successful in returning home (100%) than inexperienced mice (60%) and faster in doing so. Teferi and Millar suggest that these deer mice were able to navigate in a direct route to their home sites. We released mice in locations where they had no direct route to the house; they had to follow a winding road, climb over rocky outcroppings nearly 17 m high, or otherwise surmount obstacles and dangers, such as predators.

Perhaps I should have the Damn Husband release Harry in Chester on his way to work. The country mouse visits the urban enclave.
Poor Harry

Signs of Spring

Mikaela is feeling better and we went out in our yard looking for signs of Spring. They were everywhere! Some sneaking out of remaining patches of snow.







Building Spring fairy houses


For Nigel, it is all new and exciting. This is his first chance to explore outside.

He loves the taste of Spring!