Marisa aka bmm,
Not to beat a dead horse, but your post is definately an attack on an individual for not coming up to "your" standard. The only reason they came asking is because they were in the middle of an un-fun situation.
It's also rude of YOU to assume that everyone knows everything. Personally *I* have never claimed to be an expert at anything, but I thought I knew what I was doing one day last week.... Please - let me relate a story, and then I'd be happy for you to yell at me and tell me how dumb I am:
The scenario here revolves around 2 female mice who have spent the majority of their lives in the same community. Because I had a cannibal in the community I decided to remove the females a few days before they give birth so they could setup a new solo apartment for themselves. The first one that was ready was Delilah. She moved in to her new digs, prepared her nest, and raised some VERY healthy babies. Of those that I allowed her to ween one is now living at M.I.T. and the other is in my alpha community (he's a boy, for the record.) Delilah was a very good mother, by all indications.
As fate would have it, her previous room-mate Eve had given birth several days before Delilah was at the completion of weening her kids. Here's where the trouble starts. As it turns out Eve is a terrible mother, and although she isn't in a large apartment, she still finds anything to do but to tend to her kids. She was literally letting them starve, and by the time I decided I had to intervene it may have been >24 hours since the little runts had taken any milk. They were cold, and quite ready for the hearafter....
So, here I am... one mother still lactating, the other is psychotic, and they both know each other well and have helped each other raise micelings in the past. The thought occurs to me that the only possible hope for these pinks is if I can convince Delilah to "adopt" them. So, I take Delilah from her kids (who are old enough to ween, but still milking because they are lazy) and put her in with Eve. Just like she was the terminator, Delilah goes straight for the kids and starts CHEWING on them - not cleaning, she is outright trying to destroy them. Delilah isn't with us anymore, and I'm posetive you'd have even more rant for me if I told you how I dispatched her, but frankly she really shocked me when she did this. Like I said her kids were ready to ween - the one I kept is now the alpha male in my prime community - he and his father get along famously (wait, doesn't mouse lore tell me I simply CANT keep two males together among females?)
Anyway, so much for my great plan to "save" these pinkes from their neglegent mother. Is my mistake something that "anyone with any sense of responsibility" could not have made? Did I fail to do enough research before implementing my plan? Or is it possible, that mice, as fairly stupid creatures, simply aren't very predictable in this regard? If there IS a Great Tome of Mousey Wisdom that you'd like to refer us to I'm certain that I and others will embrace all it has to teach us, but as for you and your holier-than-thou attitude, it's not very helpful....
