Heads together

Back up three weeks before this photo was taken: three adult dormice were caught in the kitchen trap and escorted off the property. We actually drove them out to another town and released them near a wooded area.

A week later, dude on the left crawled out of the next in the hole in the wall in the kitchen and was crying in the middle of the floor. A day later his brother followed. They hadn'd even opened their eyes yet, so I placed them at about two weeks old.

Into a bucket with straw and food they went,. They were fond of bread soaked in water and honey and cantelope.

Over the next few days, three more babies emerged, all older than these. The older ones were much jumpier, both literally, dormice can jump over a foot high, and aggressive, biting at my gloved fingers in fright.

Forward to a day before this photo, when I walked the bucket a couple hundred yards from the house, made a nest under some branches, left them food and put all out. I felt a bit bad, and explained it that these were wild creatures that didn't belong in the house and the older ones seemed to be taking care of the younger ones.

The morning of these photos, there was ANOTHER juvenile caught in one of the traps. Marc walked it out to the nest, and came back with these two.

They were soaked from the rainstorm in the night and morning, looked cold and miserable, and were barely moving.

That clinched the debate whether to keep or not to keep and I'm getting an aquarium to put them in. I'm going to try and get these babies to imprint on me and see if they become tame and not bite me as they get older.

I've been feeding them goat milk with honey, the richest formula I can think of that they can digest.

A few hours later they already look much better than these noontime photos. They have groomed each other into fluffy, scrawny balls and their eyes are wide open for feeding time.

Dormice are so called because they sleep so much. The "dor" is from the Latin "dormir" which means to sleep, same as in French. Dormice are the only mice to hibernate, for a full six months!

These two have been sleeping all day, waking up every hour or so for feeding.

On the left is Folie, so called because his first home was a container from ice cream in a flavour called Folie de Chocolat. The right one is right now called Kinky, because he's got a kink in his tail.

I've already got Folie trained to climb onto my hand when I reach into the box, and climb back down after he's drunk his fill. Kinky is even scrawnier and needs to be fetched out.

It's incredible that they don't mind me handling them at all, and try to hide as soon as Marc comes up. I guess the imprinting is working!

They sleep on top of each other like all rodents, and, maybe because they are still so small, they wake up s l o w l y. It takes them about 20 seconds to realize they are uncovered and start squirming, that's how I can get these ultracute photos.