No more rodent diet requests

Ah, at last, the Googlebot has come to visit, and refresh, so now this weblog no longer has the #1 answer to searches regarding the diet of certain small rodents . When I look at our statistics for sauria.com in December so far, it seems that Ted's topics such as eclipse, java, plugins and other matters are re-gaining their prominence. Anyone truly desiring to know my opinion on rodent diets is welcome to leave a comment, but otherwise I am grateful to leave this research topic to better-qualified candidates, biologists, reporters and veterinarians, or whomever Google has deemed to replace me. I'll just have to think of another way to generate lots of Web traffic my way :-)

It's Google's fault

I am still a newbie blogger. Just began crawling in this a few months ago. And I was quite amazed when a post I wrote describing deer nibbles in my garden ended up being retrieved from search engines looking for "what do deer eat". I discovered this while looking at the statistics for the sites Ted and I share.

After my experience with a mouse in my garage, nibbling on cracker crumbs in the stroller, the natural title that came first to mind for my post was "what mice eat". I had no idea what would happen to that title and to my mouse posts. For the past few weeks at least, according to our web site statistics, variations on "what mice eat" typed into search engines are the top search key phrases and key words for both Ted and my blogs. Yep, it's not eclipse or xml anything, it's mice and what they eat that is sauria's most popular search. According to the stats, this last installment of my mouse-in-garage story is my most-read entry.

I've also received comments on my blog complaining about this entry. One from "astudent" recently wrote: "I was doing research man... No help ...." And then today I got a couple comments saying this is " dome " (dumb?!) but the next one saying "just using this for my science fair project".

It seems that students are using Google to do their research, finding my blog, and becoming disappointed that I did not write an entire scientific essay about what mice eat. No, I'm just a woman/wife/mom blogging about my life, not writing reliable research or reports.

This experience has frustrated me so much that I changed the title of this popular mouse-related entry to "My discovery". But it seems it is still coming up on search engines - at least on Google.

I find myself with 2 issues:

1) Concern for children/students and research.
Why are students using the web - and my blog! - for research? What happened to encyclopedias, books and other more-official sites and sources (pet store owners, zookeepers, rangers...)? Are kids today being taught how to discern what is out there on the Web, and how to use it correctly? Using Google as a research tool can be dangerous!

Why is a kid out there using my blog in a science fair project? What kind of science is that?! What if I was making all this up? I'm only writing a blog, not performing research. I don't even guarantee that this is true (it is, but I don't write that anywhere) - maybe I'm a satirist or fiction writer :)

And why these comments expressing frustration about how "dumb" or little help this blog is - why do they expect to get research help from my writings?! I am concerned: what does this indicate about expectations for the web, search engines and bloggers? How much do students today know about really doing research?

2) Concern for Google.
What is wrong with Google, that my silly blog about a mouse in the garage ends up as one of the top search results for "what mice eat"?! I checked the same words on Altavista, and I didn't come up anywhere on it. No surprise, I've noticed that my Matrix entries recently are getting more reads - but a big surprise that to type "Matrix Revolutions essay" into Google gets as a top result my blog entry more and more Matrix - not even my review of Matrix Revolutions! Again, Altavista doesn't show me at all.

This morning, I was complaining about all this to Ted, citing my two new comments this morning.
"It's Google's fault," he said, "not yours."

Blame it on Google. But not on me. Please.

P.S. As proof, while I was writing this draft, I got ANOTHER email comment on the mouse article : " are mice carnivorous?"

P.P.S. After I posted this, Ted told me he realized he has a tool that could help me lsearn more about why my pages rank so high on Google. That would help explain part of #2. But that still leaves #1 a big concern too.

My discovery

Crackers. Ritz crackers. Bits of Ritz crackers. Bits of Ritz crackers left behind by a baby in the stroller. Yep, the stroller. That's where our friend Mouse had found a home.

I made this discovery this morning, again while on the way to a friend's home. I went into the garage to get the stroller. Although I had taken the stroller out earlier this week, somehow the dim light in the garage wasn't sufficient for me to see. But this morning in the sunlight I saw there against the navy fabric, little bits of what Mouse had left behind, in exchange for cracker crumbs.

Over in the section of the garage where I usually store the strollers (we have three: one single, one double and one jogger), I found more droppings and it looks like Mouse even tried to make a little nest by nibbling on a seat belt strap on my nearly-new double stroller, a generous gift from my neighbors before Elisabeth was born.

It took me nearly an hour today to clean out the garage, sweeping and scrubbing. And to think that yesterday I let Elisabeth sit in the stroller for about an hour while we worked and played outside - ick!

Letting kids eat in the stroller is something I was reluctant to do. But I've been getting soft in my old age, and especially with #3 getting hungry before her big sisters do, I've been trying to help us all keep the same schedule. And I got sloppy about cleaning out the strollers. I stopped worrying about cracker crumbs and cleanliness. Now I'll be keeping things a bit more tidy!

As I've shared about our mouse adventures with a couple neighbors, I've heard other stories about other mice. It seems that we are not the only ones in the neighborhood with visitors.

Our latest theory is that Mouse snuck into the garage on Sunday night while Ted was grilling the flank steak for Michaela's party. Either that or it managed to get under the door or run inside when no one else was looking. I did find a frog in the garage last week, hiding in a pile of plastic grocery sacks. With the colder weather coming it seems that little creatures are seeking shelter. And certainly a soft bed filled with cracker crumbs would be quite enticing!

I do hope this is my last post on mice in the garage. I really don't want to find any more animals or evidence of animals. And I really want them to find a more balanced diet than cracker crumbs :) I'm sure there must be many more things that mice eat, than just leftover bits of a baby's brunch....

Of Mice and Women

apologies to Steinbeck, of course....

.... yesterday I began blogging about our adventures this week, hinting that perhaps we had discovered who was nibbling on zucchini in our garden..

Tuesday morning we had plans to get together with a friend at her home. The girls and I headed out to the garage. As was my routine, I opened the side door, then pushed the button for the automatic door. My eye went from the van door, sliding open so the girls could get inside, in a straight path along the side of the garage to the lawn mower's grass catcher attachment near the corner. On the mesh, I saw a gray ball of fur and a long pink tail: a mouse.

Before going further in this story, I need to explain my experience. After college graduation, I spent three years working in an immunology laboratory manipulating mice. I bred mice. I bled mice. I operated on them. And yes, I killed them. The surgeries and babies I enjoyed, but the "sacrificing" (to use the scientific term) of mice for experiments and eugenics was something I, a childhood animal lover, had to harden myself to do. But I learned a lot. I learned how to handle them with bare hands, although I often wore gloves. I spent hours moving mice between cages, and occasionally even pursuing stray ones that had jumped onto the floor. I caught them with forceps and fingers. I warmed them in my hands after surgery, stroking their fur and watching their eyes waken. I am familiar with mice.

So why was it that, once I saw the mouse, I shrieked? It was not a loud cry and I stopped myself, yet the response seemed automatic to me. I think I even said, "Eeek!" like a stereotypical cartoon. Despite my years of handling these animals, in almost mechanical routines, something in me reacted to the mouse in my garage. Was it shock, fear, surprise? Or was it something feminine in me? I find myself yelping about spiders I spy creeping across the carpet, even though a moment later, I will be the one crushing it inside a Kleenex. I don't sit around idly shrieking and waiting for my husband to come rescue me from creepy crawlies. Or for him to come out to the garage. I knew I had to handle it myself. And I knew I could handle it myself. But, why, then did I cry? Why did I have to scream like a frightened girl? And why is it that girls and women are expected to be afraid, to shriek and cry? Despite my laboratory training, is there still some part of me? Or a little girl not yet grown up?

What happened next was a mother's dilemma. Being a microbiologist and mouse handler by training, what I wanted to do was get the mouse out of the garage and away from the girls and me, so that we would be safe in case it was rabid or wanted to jump on us.

So I did what was easiest, given the situation. Mouse had its claws dug into the grass catcher. I carried the grass catcher out of the garage and tried to toss Mouse off of it.

Knowing what I know about mice, I thought that Mouse would handle the leap well. In the laboratory, I had seen mice escape, jump five feet down and then race around the room. But Mouse landed on the pavement and seemed to move slowly. I felt horrified, hoping I hadn't hurt it.

Then I had a real dilemma. I knew how to take care of Mouse, how to take Mouse out of misery. But by then, my two daughters wanted to know what was happening. They had come out of the van and saw Mouse stumbling around on the walkway. I didn't think I wanted them to see me kill Mouse with my hands. What would they think of Mommy? And I wasn't sure I really wanted to touch Mouse anyway. I wouldn't want to get a bite or a virus from a rodent. By now too I was late getting to my friends' home.

So I came up with a compromise. I managed to catch Mouse inside a flower pot. It was slow enough that it was easy to do. Then I left Mouse there, with a baby food jar lid filled with water along with it in the flowerpot. I figured that if Mouse was well enough to jump out, it could do so and escape to freedom in health. If Mouse needed some water to survive, it would be able to make it until we came home again. And if Mouse was not going to make it, then at least it would die in a contained place, safely.

Knowing what I know about mice though, I had some idea what was about to happen. When I looked at Mouse, I saw a patch of fur below its face that seemed pressed and injured. I don't think that the fall from the toss inflicted that wound. Also when I looked in its eyes, I could see that one of the eyes was blinded. And the other looked injured also. I felt sad that Mouse was in such a state. I hoped that I had not hurt it. I don't think I did. Mouse seemed emaciated, and I suspect it was already weakened, perhaps from being trapped in the garage.

We went to see our friends and came home later than I had imagined, after three hours. Right after we pulled into the driveway, I ran out to look at Mouse. I felt more horror as I saw it lying on its side stiffly in the flowerpot, dead as I had predicted. Both the girls were sad, telling Ted the moment they saw him at lunch. They stared at it, mourning it more than I did, until I told them to go in the house. I felt sad, but my training in the laboratory had numbed me. I think I was also selfishly relieved that the situation had resolved itself, that my dilemma had ended. The way my family reacted revealed to me how callous I was about Mouse.

With the girls inside the house, I came out alone, plastic bags in hand, and put Mouse away. No Eek this time. Icky maybe but not Eek. It was hard to be afraid of the ball of fur with stiff straight limbs. It was easy to have pity on Mouse, who had died at my house outside in a flower pot, a victim perhaps of my vigor. And Mouse only reminded me of many other mice I had seen die in the laboratory. I put it inside a the bags, tying a knot. Then I buried Mouse in the trash can. I didn't scream. But maybe I should have cried.

Gadzukes, spoiled again....!

Last week, along with the Muckleshoot salmon , I was planning to serve zucchini, harvested from the garden, and stir-fried with spices. However, when the girls and I picked the squash, once we took a good look at it, I realized we couldn't eat it: someone else already had tried!

According to the statistics, "What deer eat" is one of the most -requested search key phrases that links to this weblog. Last month 12 people searched for those specific words. Type "what deer eat" into Google and on the first page appears my July entry Deer eat free . Apparently there are people out there who want to know what deer eat.

As I have written in the past, deer have eaten a variety of vegetables in my garden - from tomato branches to carrot tops to zucchini blossoms. But looking at the bite marks on the zucchini, only the second one we had harvested this year, I knew it was not a deer who made those marks....

...oh, no.....and just yesterday I got a better idea who has been eating in our little garden...I'll write more about that adventure tomorrow :)