Joyce Harkin, age 10, of Dallas, Iowa, for her question:
How does a mother mouse carry her babies?
A furry little bright‑eyed mouse is one of the most loving mothers in the animal kingdom. In fact., she is constantly occupied with motherhood. From the time she is about two months old, her life is filled with one litter of babies after another, Luckily for us, most of them become food for larger animals, otherwise the world would be over‑run with mice and these shy little creatures do a lot of damage. They eat a lot of our food and spoil much more.
The grey‑brown house mouse is but one of a great variety of mousey cousins. She is only distantly related to the mice who live in the woods and meadows. Each mousey mother has her own ideas about raising her litters and they may be different from those of her mousey cousins. All mice mothers, however, agree that babies should be brought up in a cosy nest. The youngsters do not leave the nest until they are able to cope with the world. This means that Mamma does not have to carry them around ‑although sometimes the nest is threatened and she has to move to a safer place.
Mrs. Mouse, no matter what variety, is of course, a mammal. This means that her babies are born live and fed on mother’s milk. The little ones are born blind and naked. It takes five to ten of them to weigh one ounce, and any one of them would fit comfortably into a thimble. Depending upon the variety, it takes anywhere from two to three weeks for the babies to develop inside the mother's body. Very often the little mother is carrying a new brood of babies in her body while still nursing a litter in the nest.
The house mouse builds her nest of torn paper, rags and any other soft bits of material she can find. She chooses a dark, dry quiet place ‑which may turn out to be a bureau drawer.
The harvest mouse is a dainty little acrobat, swinging gracefully on the stems of corn and tall grasses. Her nest is a ball of grasses fixed to a stem about a foot from the ground. Let's watch the prettiest of all our mice save her babies. She is the white‑footed mouse, alias the deer mouse or wood mouse. Her head and back are soft brown. Her underneath and her booties are snowy white. Mrs. White Foot builds her nest in an old tree trunk, in a vacant birds nest or squirrels nest. It is made of soft grasses and leaves. There is a roof and only one tiny door. When Mrs. White Foot feels threatened she hastily builds another nest not too far away. Then she goes back for her babies. She takes up ones holding the scruff of his neck in her sharp little teeth, and carries him to his new nest. She returns for another and another until all her tiny babies are in the safe now nest.