Artie

So Saturday AFTER the flood of people coming in our condo to check out/repair the flood damage Eric and I had the day to ourselves. Camping was pretty much shot because of all the early morning excitement. First we took a much needed nap. Then Eric says, "Lets go get a pet mouse."

Side note: My husband LOVES rodents. He likes mice, rats, hamsters, gerbils, squirrels and alike. He is allergic to guinea pigs but I'm sure if they weren't deadly to him he'd love those too. I'm not quite sure what brought on the sudden urge to get a pet mouse although I know he had several pet rodents as a child.

To Petz Mart we went and picked out two mice. One we knew we were going to name one of the mice Artie (after Artie Lang, the comedian on the Howard Stern Show) and the other I named Oscar. As we were picking out the cage (so much to choose from! I felt like a new mother.) we were looked over and there was a big black cat just chillin in the isle. We later learned his name is Felix and he's the house cat whose job is to oversee ---- stuff. Before we could say, "Here kitty kitty!" the big cat opened it's mouth and out fell two black infant baby mice. Eric, Mr. save the rodents, ran to the mice and picked them up and took them to the Emergency Room, otherwise know as the front desk. While he was gone I stood there in disbelief. Does the pet store give their house cat baby mice to play with? How cruel! I look again at the cat who now has retreated back in to the shelving unit. There, I see him open his mouth and out plop two MORE infant mice! Just then the clerk in the store comes back and informs us that a wild mouse has clearly had it's babies in the shelving unit somewhere and where ever the first two came from there are probably more. Confirmed! I know we now we have 4 infant mice. After some searching we recovered no more babies. Felix had gotten them all, I guess. The clerk assured us that even though the babies were being taken from their Mom that they had cages full of mommy mice that would take good care of these four orphans. Let this be a lesson to us all! Don't have your babies in a bag of hay in the middle of a pet store! No matter how safe you think it is!

The rest of the day seemed so mute for a while, next to that wild mouse orphan event, until we took our two mice home to discover we had an mouse dominance issue. Artie was meek and mild while Oscar was -- well, he lived up to his name. Oscar the Grouch. Oscar attacked Artie constantly and for, what seemed to us to be, no reason. He bit Artie all over until he drew blood on his tail, back and butt. We could only take so much squealing before we had to separate them, putting Oscar in the tub until the morning when we returned him for being a brute.

**Pictures of Artie to come**

The End.