Mice Beautiful

Reported the New Yorker three weeks ago: "A little group of animal lovers organized . . . under the title Mouse Beautiful are out to capture the flagging interest of former guppy-and ant-fanciers. . . . Their bait, as the quick ones among you will have guessed, is mice--white ones, the same sort as those now scampering madly all over the best London drawing rooms."

The New Yorker did not reveal: that the "group of animal lovers" was one Marcia O'Day, attractive little 28-year-old brunette; that the Mouse Beautiful started as a joke among her friends; that Miss O'Day does not breed mice but buys them from a pet shop.

The New Yorker was evidently unaware that white mice are no longer an fait in London drawing rooms. More than 20 colors are now available--bred by experts who give mouse shows, regard mouse breeding as Big Business and to whom white mice are now old hat.

Top mouse-supplier for London drawing rooms is Mrs. E. D. Blowers, the "Mouse Queen." For ten years Mrs. Blowers has been breeding mice of all colors--she now has 20,000 mice at her "mousery" in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. She estimates that there are 500,000 tame mice in England.

Mouse Queen Blowers' mice do not scamper madly around her drawing room. They live in nesting boxes--from three to seven in each--stacked in tiers in little huts which hold some 2,000 mice each. Daily they are fed a teaspoonful of oats, alternated with a little stale bread soaked in milk. Mating, classification, feeding, selection for marketing, is a fulltime job for Mrs. Blowers and two assistants. Her mousery produces an average of 1,000 mice a week. Prices range from $1.50 a dozen for mice for experimental laboratories, to $5 to $7.50 each for the best fancy varieties. Highest price she ever heard of was $40 for one mouse.

Mice are adult at the age of twelve weeks, "old men" at two years. Six weeks after birth they are quite tame and can be taught tricks (climbing ladders, working treadmills). They are ready to mate at the age of seven weeks, but wise breeders wait until the buck has reached ten weeks, the doe twelve. Each buck has six wives at a time, but every couple of months all but one doe are taken out to give the buck a rest. A mouse is pregnant 19 to 21 days, litters are from five to ten mouselets. Bucks are never put together after leaving the parent nest; they would fight until one was killed.

Mouse Queen Blowers would like to make the U. S. mouse-conscious. Already the U. S. has its mouse organization: the American Mouse Fanciers' Club, about 35 members led by Rev. R. Willoughby Ferrier of Stockport, N. Y. In November the U. S. will be introduced to Mouse Queen Blowers and several hundred of her choicest mice at a Manhattan cat show.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.