A rider returned home from a hack with an unexpected passenger in her pocket after she rescued a mouse from a country lane.
Becki Davies from Devon was clocking up some miles for the Hack1000Miles challenge one morning in May aboard Patrick, a 17-year-old Irish hunter, when she spotted something move in the hedge and roll onto the floor.
“I thought it looked like a little mouse or rat pup. Being a country girl, I left it and thought its mum would come and get it, and we carried on our ride,” explained Becki.
“About an hour later we returned along the same lane. I could still see him on the ground and there were a couple of magpies circling.
“I don’t really like to get involved because little animals like that don’t really survive out of the wild, but off I jumped and picked him up. He was quite cold so I put him in my pocket and led Patrick home.”
Touch and go
Back at home, Becki, who studied animal care and basic vet nursing at college, put the mouse, who she estimated was half the size of a walnut, in a container with some hay and fed him kitten milk.
“I put a little bit of kitten milk on my hand and he started licking it,” said Becki.
“Every two hours for a week I fed him. There were a couple of nights where I thought ‘he’s going to go’, and then all of a sudden his little eyes and ears opened.”
The mouse has been named Lloyd and now lives in a four-foot tank in the family’s office.
Part of the family
“I work hybrid now, so he’ll come out in the office and hang out with me during the day. He knows when it’s lunchtime because he’s there waiting for something that I’ve got on my plate. He likes to have a nibble,” said Becki.
“Every week we go foraging and find new things for him in the wild. We empty his tank out and put the new enrichment in.
“I try to keep his diet as natural as possible. He likes a bit of chick crumb and he’s had blackberries. He loves it if I put grass in a flowerpot. I’ve hidden a couple of mealworms in there and he’ll forage through that.”
‘A mummy’s boy’
Becki says Lloyd is quite a character. He answers to his name and is cheeky and adventurous.
“He’s speedy and he sometimes gets the zoomies but he also loves to snuggle. He’ll happily sit in your hand and watch you,” said Becki.
“It would be really lovely for him to have a friend, but I couldn’t introduce him to a domestic mouse because he was born in the wild so you don’t know what he could be carrying. He’s also too tame to be released. He’s definitely a mummy’s boy.”
Images © Becki Davies.
