When I was 11, I had a year-long science project involving mice - breeding to determine colour variation, etc. Started with 2 white mice and 2 black mice . . . ended up with over 60 mice in varying shades.
The cages were in my bedroom (do not even think about the smell . . .) - my cat, Mr. Moto, was determined to "cull the herd" on a regular basis and learned how to open the cage doors. We didn't know this for quite awhile; we just thought the little buggers were escaping between the bars.
I can still see my mother, who really didn't like the mice but did support my fledgling efforts at scientific enquiry, chasing Moto down the hall as he attempted to swallow a mouse whole, while on the run. She'd catch the cat, put her hand around his throat, and - more often than not - succeed in pulling a very damp, very confused, and probably very traumatised mouse out of his mouth. Said mouse would be delivered to me held at arm's length by it's tail.
She told me later that the mice were better than the colony of horned toads I collected and kept when I was about 6. I made outfits for them out of scraps of material, dug up ant colonies to collect the eggs for them to eat, and built them little houses out of shoe-boxes (my dad got me an old refrigerator box to keep them in and my toad town was inside the box. When they died, I insisted on giving them "proper" burials and she had to put up with my little toad cemetery in her flower bed - complete with a picket fence made of whitewashed popcicle sticks and tombstones with their names painted on for each grave.
Mice are cute - so are horned toads. Don't mind snakes, either (unless they're venomous). We don't have mice around here - or horned toads or snakes. Just lizards. Lizards aren't bad, but not as much fun.
