We lost Tino the mouse, one of our beloved furbabies, on Thursday. I found him that afternoon, laying beside the food pile with some sunflower seed shells around his sweet face (how that little guy loved his food!), still warm and looking very peaceful. Tino was very elderly for a field mouse (at least six years old), blind in one eye, and had been quite frail for a while - in fact, we had thought we were going to lose him in January. But he rallied, though he remained feeble compared to his buddy Val.
Tino peeks through the "DIY skylight" in a cardboard tube, a favorite place to sleep.
Val and Tino, who may have been brothers, came to live with us during a bitter Valentine's Day blizzard six years ago (hence their names), when they'd come into our garage seeking shelter from the cold and the storm. We lived in the country and field mice entered our attached garage often enough - until we found the wee hole they were using - that we finally invested in several "tin cat" humane live traps. We'd release the mice near food, water and shelter a good distance from the house (1/4 mile away or more, though goodness knows some of them probably found their way back and got to repeat the adventure!), unless the weather was very bad. For those times we'd bought an aquarium, shavings, food, water dish and exercise wheel, and became the proprietors of the Whiskers Inn B&B. :-) Our tiny guests enjoyed a warm, cozy, delightful stay until the weather turned nice enough to release them back outside, and after a two or three day stay most of our guests made it clear (by dancing along the glass or trying to chew their way through the lid) that they were ready to check out!
But not Val and Tino. Knowing a cushy deal when they found it, they signed a long-term lease and became full-time boarders. Luckily for us, they were both male! They were the first mice to make themselves right at home and remain content to be there, the first to learn how to use the exercise wheel - even teaching themselves games on it - and though never growing tame enough to want to be held or cuddled, quickly grew calm around us, settling into a comfy routine. And so we changed the name of the establishment from the Whiskers Inn B&B to "Mouseville" (a little tribute to Mr. Jingles from one of our very favorite movies, The Green Mile).
Of course we're sad to lose Tino, but it helps to know we gave him a safe, comfortable, hopefully happy, extraordinarily long life. He enjoyed spending time outside on warm, sunny days, was particularly fond of eating organic nom-noms (sunflower seeds, dried soybeans, raw pumpkin seeds, carrots, raw almonds, date pieces, raisins, brown rice, and oat groats), had the adventure of not only moving from room to room within our house several times, but from house to house three times (though at least he got to always take familiar Mouseville with him every time!), and before he grew too feeble to use it much, he adored the exercise wheel. He was the first to learn how to use it and became very skilled at it. (One way we were always able to tell Val and Tino apart was that Val, never as coordinated as Tino in their youth, scuffed his nose once trying to get into the wheel while Tino was spinning it and ever afterward had a hairless scar on his schnozzle!) One of their favorite games was for Val to sit still in the wheel while Tino ran as fast as he could, vaulting over Val every time the spinning wheel brought him around, until Tino would finally jump out of the moving wheel leaving Val to spin around and around until the wheel stopped. I'd have puked my guts out, but Val and Tino just loved that game! :-)
It's hard for us to tell how poor Val is feeling about the absence of his nearly lifelong friend and possible brother, but we can't imagine he doesn't feel the loss. They always slept cuddled up together, played together, and I have no doubt were very fond of each other. Though probably the same age as Tino, Val is still very spry and active, and we hope to enjoy his lively company for some time to come. Tino will be laid to rest in our front flower bed, where he will eventually become part of the flowers we'll be planting there in a couple of months.
Update 4/21/13: Despite doing well for the first three weeks after Tino's death, Val became frail and wobbly in the past week. This morning when I got up and checked on him, I found that he had died in his sleep during the night - one month to the day after Tino. They were probably the same age, and very elderly for mice, but given Val's rapid decline so soon after Tino's death it's impossible not to imagine that Val didn't die of a broken heart, missing his constant companion. Sweet and good to the very end, Val died just ahead of a major spring snowstorm that's due to arrive at noon today, bringing 5-10" of snow to our area over the next two days, giving us time this morning to bury him beside Tino in the still-warm soil of the front flowerbed. Rest in peace, little one, we love and will miss you so very much.
Here are a few photos of the boys together...
Val and Tino during their first days at Whiskers Inn,
before they figured out how their exercise wheel worked!
Tino and Val at play
Tessa LOVED watching Val and Tino! She'd even watch Mouseville for hours when the boys were sleeping inside their tube or burrowed into their shavings, certain they'd come out any minute to entertain her with their antics! BW said that Tess was addicted to "MTV." :-)
We love and miss you, dear Tino and Val! Wherever your sweet spirits are now, I hope there is lots of yummy food, fun games to play, and nice playmates to cuddle with. Thank you for being such dear, precious little friends.
"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened."
~ Anatole France
