NH shelter is dealing with a huge mouse problem after humans surrendered almost 1,000 rodents

STRATHAM, N.H. (AP) — A group of mice is called a litter, but what do you call 1,000 mice in one animal shelter?

“Paralyzing,” said Lisa Dennison, executive director of the New Hampshire Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which is working to ensure an overwhelming influx of people. fast reproducing rodents.

It all started Monday when a man arrived and said he wanted to give up 150 mice. But then he clarified: 150 containers of mice, not individual bugs. He had 73 mice with him that day and by Friday morning about 450 had been transferred to the shelter. There were about 500 more on the way.

Lined up nose to tail, they covered more than a football field. There’s enough to give one mouse to each member of Congress and the 424-member New Hampshire Legislature combined. And the total is growing thanks to a bit of basic biology. Female mice reach sexual maturity when they are about six weeks old, the gestation period lasts about twenty days and they can mate again 24 hours later.

“Even in the short time we’ve had them, a lot of these mice have given birth,” Dennison says. “It’s an exponential problem that continues to grow.”

Part of the shelter’s cat pavilion has been transformed into a mouse hospital and hotel, with dozens of containers lined up on the floor, resting on multiple tables and stacked on shelves. It’s a chore to log every mouse into the shelter’s database, let alone provide food, water, and bedding.

It’s a lot of work for a facility that took in at most 125 animals in one day.

“It does happen when you take a large number, but even if we take in 54 goats or 39 cats, I mean, those are still large numbers, but as you can imagine much more manageable than hundreds and hundreds of mice. Dennison said.

Other shelters have agreed to take in some of the mice, and some are being sent to foster homes while the shelter looks for donations of food supplies. About a dozen mice were up for adoption Friday after being named by shelter staff and volunteers. Doug, Darrell, Dude and Deputy waited for houses in one tank. Others were given candy-inspired names: Butterfinger, Junior Mint and Milk Dud, to name a few.

Elisha Murray heard about the shelter’s dire situation through local news and decided to adopt four females named Kelly, Dee, Maxine and Eleven, despite telling her children last week, “No more rodents.”

“We’ve always had small rodents as pets – rats, mice, hamsters, all nine of them – so I thought I could help,” she said. “We already have the whole setup, everything I need, in house, so I thought, what the heck.”