Goodbye, litte mice!

One year. One year, I’ve worked in the facility that breeds and raises lab mice for my university’s research and education needs.

For one year, I’ve cleaned cages, refilled water bottles, helped sick mice regain their health, made sure pregnant mice had the best conditions and newborn mice didn’t suffer from some painful genetic condition.

And now, I must leave them all behind because my education requires me to focus more attention on my studies. There is no way that I can do both, work with the lab mice and finish my degree.

What have I seen in that one year?

I’ve seen pregnant mice give birth to beautiful babies that look like tiny piglets when they’re only a day old. With their eyes closed and their ears tightly attached to their head, they already wiggle around and squeak in protest when you move them from their dirty cage into a fresh one.

The first few of those babies are now a year old and most of them had offspring they selves. Some of them are dead, either because they were needed for research or because they got very sick and couldn’t recover. It always hurt to end one of their lives, even if they were suffering horribly.

Only a few months back, when my boss was on vacation, someone removed a nursing mother mouse from a cage instead of the father by accident. The babies should not have survived. But 5 days later, we discovered them severely dehydrated but very much alive. Somehow, their father had managed to supply them with food and water. We still wonder how he did it. But the babies, they survived without any lasting damage.

There is a special area with some really old mice, they are 2 and sometimes even 3 years old and they’re all females. The old ladies, we call them. Their fur isn’t as shiny anymore and they move slowly, but they still get excited at the smell of peanut butter. They’re not really supposed to have it; only pregnant mice need the extra energy. But who can resist those eyes? Those cute, twitchy noses? Not me.

One male mouse, I call him Hugo, he has had a note attached to his cage that reads Keep an eye on him! Breathing is sometimes very irregular. Might be suffering.
This note has been there for half a year and Hugo still refuses to confirm the fears my boss had. I’m sure he’ll outlive several of the younger mice.

There are so many more happy moments I had with these mice, as well as very sad ones. But I don’t want to remember the sad ones because they are all linked to death and disease. Breeding lab mice is just as awful as breeding thoroughbred dogs or cats or chicken. If you’re breeding for specific traits, some individuals will suffer from hereditary diseases.

So while I do my last rounds, check on my lovelies one more time, I just hope that my successor adores them just as much as I do. Because I will certainly miss them a lot.

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