i was walking around outside today and i noticed a little hopper mouse runnin around and then go in a hole. i saw him agin goin out and into that hole. my mom also saw him. i was thinking i would catch him with a pair of live traps that my dad got at an old navy building. i think that there is probably a family in that hole so i was thinking i would catch them and breed them so that i wouldn't have to buy so much food for my corn snake. is it safe to feed them to my snake. well i wouldn't feed the ones that are alive now but i would feed the ones that the current live ones will breed. is it safe please tell me. and if i do do this then how is a safe humane way to kill babies to freeze. any help would be greatly appreciated.
Where I used to live, in Bishop, Ca, we had deer mice in the wild. The spread a disease called Hauntavirus (I think thats how its spelled.) It gave you what seems like cold or flu like symptoms for a couple days, then you were fine for about a day. Then your lungs filled with fluid at an believe rate and you died. (I used the word "you" for some reason as though everybody including myself caught it all the time or something, but its just the way I worded the description. But one of my freinds from childhood did catch it when we were probably about sixteen or so, and she died from it. So I'm a little frightened myself about messing with wild rodents. As far as I know it is only spread by deer-mice. It is spread by their poop when it gets dry and broken up, and then gets lifted by the wind and into some unexpecting persons lungs. -Cristine
i lev in Va. and hvaen't heard of any reports of disease but thx for that hint and im sorry about your friend that passed on.
Thats ok. It was a long time ago. But I get remined of it everytime one of my freinds gets mice in their apartments or something. (I love my cats and they are mostly here just to be my babies and get spoiled, but they are also here in part to make sure we never get mice.) We never got reports or anything like that about diseases either where we were, but it might not hurt to contact the fish and game to inquire about any diseases they might know about before you collect any mice. Even after my freinds death, stuff about the disease was kept relatively quiet to protect the towns dependency on tourism, (one of the many reasons I left as soon as I could.) So basically nothing about prevented the disease was really announced, so if one was interested, they had to do the recearch themselves. -Cristine
well i guess ill go ask my dad because he is natural resources manager for alot of navy bases hes in charge of that kind of stuff around here.
Thats pretty convient! I wish that I had that kind of resource out here. I usually have to direct my questions to animal control, or the fish and game. The are kind of sick of me by now I'm sure. Good luck! -Cristine
ya i'm sure dad gets sick of me sometimes. but obviously i was good enough because i just got an x box today for my b-day yay. ohh and he says that i should just catch them for him and then he can take em somewhere because he doesn't want them to stink up the place or take over the freezer.
I'm new to all of this, but wild mice carry so many bad things...I wouldn't chance it. Maybe you could purchase some mice from the pet store and then breed them. That way you know for sure you are safe. The only thing is....do you know how often mice breed???
Markey, mice can start breeding at around a month (or even younger) old. And after having a litter of babies, the mother can recover and be able to breed again when her first litter is still relatively new. Mice breed almost as often as they get the chance. -Cristine
Wild mice are a bad choice for your snake. They can carry parasites and all kinds of other things that can be harmful to your snake. Stick with the frozen rodents from you local shop. Where in VA are you from?
