Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
The Flying Squirrels is back, and this year, it has a friend, there is a second one. But first, a mouse. I am livestreaming this camera (Ostdrossel tree cam) on the BirdsyTV public platform at birdsy.com. Hoping to see an owl again!
Anonymous: Could i please get a small mammal cursed bio fact if u have one
the grasshopper mouse of the southwestern United States looks like a standard house mouse but is almost entirely carnivorous and is known to kill and consume everything from less homicidal mice to goddamn rattlesnakes, which they kill by jumping onto the snake’s back and gnawing through its spine
well, that’s a question with kind of a funny answer!
see, the oldest domesticated rodent in the world is the house mouse, domesticated an absolutely staggering 15,000+ years ago. that’s older than cats, sheep, cattle AND horses!
also, we didn’t do it to them. they did it to themselves.
basically what happened was, humans figured out how to harvest and store grains long-term, and a strain of a local mouse population in Eurasia in turn figured out that human-owned grain stores were the place to be!
and from there, they moved into human dwellings.
basically, these mice accustomed themselves to human proximity in exchange for resources, and intensified this tolerance over the ages until they found that they were now a completely different SPECIES from when they started!
exactly the same as every other domesticated animal, except that we didn’t consent to it and also we hate them for piddling in our shoes.
BASTARD.
and from there, it really wasn’t much of a stretch to notice that these little miniburglers were actually kind of adorable, and just nab a couple and start breeding them to be pretty. they were already domesticated, so the stretch from “pest” to “pet” wasn’t very far at all!
in fact, you could say it was just a letter away :)
