Blossom the Portable Mouse

Written by Teramis on 10 November 2011

In October 2010 I had three mice who needed companions: Gigi (‘Geejers’), a girl slowly dying of cancer and without a colony to keep her company; Mikey, a boy who just seemed lonely; and Max, an older fellow whose obsessive scratching was so bad he’d scratched his ears off. We were hoping that a companion would help keep him distracted and reduce his compulsive behavior. So in November I cast around for new meeple to join these three. Earnie the ASF rat and Tully the pure-bred mouse would come later, acquired from breeders at a southeastern rodent show in mid-December. But my first acquistion was a pet-shop girl I found on November 1st: Blossom.

She was a Very Small Mouse, with teeny-tiny eyes that she squinched shut in favor of sniffing at things with her nose. She was the one who didn’t hide from us humans outside her tank, but instead timidly confronted us, sniffing and squinting in our direction. Had to have her.

Blossom Nov 2010 300x224 Blossom the Portable Mouse

"Is it safe yet?" - Blossom coming home from the pet store.

She swiftly became my Portable Mouse – always cheerful, always happy to wake up and see where she was going next. To visit Max? To cuddle with Geejers? To play with the Food Giant? Whatever was asked of her, she was game, even though she was also always very timid. You could see her curiosity prodding her to explore, while her caution left her trembling with flashes of trepidation. Still, she soldiered on, and went from cage to tank, from companion to companion, whenever she was asked.

Later, when those meeple (mouse-people) died, Blossy moved in with Earnie the ASFrat, and the unlikely pair – bitty little Blossom, Big Earnie, three times her size – became inseparable Mutt-and-Jeff companions. And more recently, with the addition of new Geejers (her second time around; I’ll tell her reincarnation story in another post), Blossy was again the Portable Mouse, going from tank to tank until all the girls were introduced and could finally live comfortably together.

Blossom had bowel problems from Day 1 (took her to the vet for “no pooping” problems her first week here). When she was 9 months old, it seemed she would die from a combination of lung and bowel problems, but she did a sudden turnaround, and lived 4 more months. But gradually she began to eat less, and had tenderness and swelling on the side of her chest, apparently an internal tumor. Her last month of life was in marked decline, and her death at 13 months is very untimely: that is something like being around 40 for a human.

Still, I spent some quality time with her, she was safe and snuggled in the girl’s little colony for all of that time, and I was able to catch her last days of life on film. And that is the video embedded here.

Blossom was a sweet little soul, and I’m blessed to have known her.

Nicknames: Awesome Blossom, Glossy Blossy, Portable Mouse

Related Posts: Related videos and meeple-posts are indexed on this Meeple page.