Mousies!

[ellen_datlow]

So...how many of you know that there are Mouse shows (like cat and dog shows) where enthusiasts show their mice? I just discovered this on a listserve I'm on (ghost stories not mice) and was pointed to this site:
national mouse club

Go to "breed standards" and you'll some really pretty mice. Especially the "satin"--champagne and the agouti under the "AOV" section.

I was hoping they preened or did special walks as dogs do but no such luck. Still. Cool, no?

Comments

[charlesatan.livejournal.com]

It's news to me!

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Heh...

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

There's also been quite a trade in fancy show rats as well. Rex rats, for one...pretty amazing. I learned about all that stuff when the son was showing rabbits since those critters would also end up at shows as well.

One of my 4-H kids had champion-level rats. Very sweet and all that, but still...not my thing.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I've heard that rats make smart, sweet pets but also, not my thing.

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

I've had beautiful mice: blue and white agouti silky, blue silky, and black and tan satin. The satin was gorgeous.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Ooh is that one of yours? Adorable--and such big ears...

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

That was Spottygirl. I have a picture of Cary, too, but as you can see, as a blue silky he looked a little scruffy. He was tiny, but he made up for it in vice.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Bella approves and is looking over --or under them :-)

How many do you have?

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

None a the moment. I had three females, but as it happened only two of them were female, so then I had 25 mice, the vast majority of them hairless and tiny. So I decided to take a break from anything where you can't tell the difference. Now I have the hamster, who likes living alone and is clearly female, at least judging from the eyelashes.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

ohmigod! Um, what did you do with 25 mice?

Ha! Never trust eyelashes to prove gender. Haven't you seen guys with gorgeous eyelashes?

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

Well, that was sort of the case with Cary, who was tiny and had huge eyes and was the most feminine mouse I have ever seen. Crossdressing was very, very good to him.

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

After trying pretty hard to find homes for them, I gave the babies to my friend the vet tech. Best not to ask beyond that.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

It sounds as if he had a wonnnnderful time.

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

We called him The Sperminator.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

I just totally got a Plot Bunny, for an element in something larger I've been mulling. HAH. My flist is awesome.

Thanks!

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

My pleasure. I hope it becomes a wonderful story.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

I swear, my brain makes the wildest leaps sometimes...

This should be interesting. And will require a lot more note-taking than I normally do. YAY! *leashes the Muses before they run away* Seriously, I've been having the hardest time coming up with the next thing; I have plenty of ideas but no plots to wrap around them. I just got idea and plot wrapped up in a big shiny bow.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wish I could have taken you to the North American Reptile Breeders Conference weekend before last. Now there we get special walks, mostly with monitors, iguanas, and Uromastyx lizards, but we also get just some really impressive animals. My mother is deathly afraid of snakes, and even she could fall in love with an Australian black-headed python or a Timor monitor. Me, I still regret slightly that I didn't buy the frilled dragon that one breeder had for sale for $150, considering that frilled dragons were running for $1500 the last time I priced them. However, I think I'm going to hold out until I can get my totem animal (http://www.drseward.com/).

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

My old savannah monitor Steadman could have given plenty of suggestions. Suppertime was a rodent recreation of Valley of Gwangi.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I would love to have gone.
Gila monsters are very pretty but aren't they also very poisonous?

I like the satin too...

[themadblonde]

but also like the tri-coloured. Did not find any coloured like siamese cats, though I have seen rabbits w/ that colouration & always kinda wanted one. We often thought about getting Miranda-kitty a guinea pig, but I couldn't deal w/ anything smaller. I had a bad gerbil experience as a child.

Re: I like the satin too...

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Guinea pigs are very cute...have you ever seen/heard them popcorn? If you touch them the right way they pop up and down and make a very cute sound :-)

do you...

[themadblonde]

have much experience touching guinea pigs in the right way? ;-)

Seriously, I've never owned one, but we had a class guinea pig when I was in grade school & I often took him home on weekends. He was quite a talker & I occasionally took him out to play in fields, which got him rather excited.

Re: do you...

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine had one and yes--I touched him or her --It wasn't sexual (at least from my pov) and I can't remember how/where I was instructed to pet/rub...and it just jumped up and down making these squealing noises...LOL ok. I'm easily made happy.

apparently...

[themadblonde]

so was your friend's guinea pig. ;-)

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

Very much so, but the bright side is that they mellow out very nicely in captivity. Nobody's quite sure as to why this is (I suspect that it has everything to do with the amount of UVB the lizards receive in the wild), but they become remarkably dog-tame with regular handling. Naturally, they still give about the same kick as a Western diamondback rattlesnake, and their bites are still horrendous even without the venom, but as I said, they're my totem animal. (Spending nine months of the year underground, emerging only to suck eggs, and confronting interlopers with a venomous bite and a surly disposition...yep, that sounds like me, all right.)

Re: apparently...

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

LOL!

Re: I like the satin too...

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

My younger brother Eric had a friend with a very talkative guinea pig named Whistles, and we got to keep Whistles in our room during the summer of 1980 while the friend was on vacation for two weeks. Whistles not only popcorned, but he constantly went into shrieking fits whenever ANYTHING moved in that room. After three days of being awakened from a dead sleep by the guinea pig freaking out whenever my brother or I would roll over in the night, I understood why the Inca raised them for food. After five days, I was looking for recipes.

[foresthouse.livejournal.com]

Pssst: they have chinchilla shows, too! Heh. They have different fur types and all as well, and breeding charts. My favorites are the mosaics (white with grey-black ears and nose) and the violets (a deep purpley black). My Rogue is a pink-white, but could never be shown because she has a malformed nose from a babyhood injury (before I got her). My Jubilee that passed away was a hetero beige with a kind of bluish-purple undercurrent to her fur, and was so pretty, the breeder almost didn't want to sell her to me - he wanted to show her. She had little freckles on her ears that were just adorable. *sigh* Poor thing.

Hem. Anyway, enough rambling about my pet(s). I'd love to go to a show if I knew where one was, though. :)

[foresthouse.livejournal.com]

P.S. My chillas both know/knew some tricks. They are quite smart. I think that should be part of the show, although I don't know if it is.

Also I had 2 mice at one point, Tori and Ani. They told me they were girls, and they turned out to be boys! But they were very pretty, even if they were just pet-store mice. Sooo smart.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Awww, Ginger Clark, a literary agent has chinchillas as pets. All furry things are cute, as far as I'm concerned.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

It's not only small mammals that people have a difficult time sexing. When I was a kid we got a parakeet, named him Johnnie and he turned out to be a she.

[foresthouse.livejournal.com]

It was just fortunate for me that I'd named them after two singers with kind of unisex names. Heh.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

We ended up with Frankie (a male) and Johnny (the female we thought was male)--they hated each other. Frankie ended up shaken to death by our cocker spaniel when we were out for the day--feathers all over the place. And Johnnie lasted a long time after that till she just dropped off her perch dead.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

Gila monsters carry venom sacs in the back of their jaws, and when they bite or chew on their prey or someone's hand the venom dribbles down from the sacs and along grooves in the rear fangs, whereby it seaps into the wounds. The venom is not nearly as toxic as, say, the rattle snake's (rattlers inject their venom). Gila venom can cause sickness, though, and even the loss of a limb, if not treated. And the bite is very painful.

Gilas are very shy and seldom encountered by humans. But when a herpetologist *does* encounter one in the wilds it is cause for celebration. (I love reptiles...)