Meanwhile some happy news, on the mouse front. Crystal, our mouse coming up on an estimated two years old, whom we feared was in her last days a couple weeks ago? She seems fine. She's wobbly, and fat, but she's becoming more tolerant of being yoinked out of her cage to be sat down in a travel carrier with a bit of meloxicam-infused sugar cookie, and some days she doesn't even try to bury it to never be bothered with the thing again.
Question that ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger has raised, and that we can't answer, is: is she happier now that she has three other mice sharing the space with her? On the one hand, female mice are social creatures and it probably feels good to have something you understand to interact with. And we do see that, like, they all nest together. On the other hand, she is old and the three sisters are young and energetic and you can almost see her closing her eyes hoping this nonsense quiets down. And we had to start taking her out of the bin to give her medicine because when we give her anything, anything, another mouse comes along and grabs it. It looks like bullying --- occasionally she even peeps in protest --- but she also doesn't try getting it back, maybe because she's aware that another treat will come along while other mouse is busy eating the first.
On the whole my guess is she's probably happier having the constant stimulation of creatures whose activity she understands, as opposed to waiting around to see whether whatever the heck we are have come to drop off food or hay or are just grabbing her for no obvious reason. As mentioned, we do see they nest together and they don't fight worth mentioning except for the pistachio incident. Just hope she's enjoying things.
Something anyone can enjoy? Kennywood, and even more specifically than that ...
Kenny Kangaroo running --- running, like kangaroos can't do --- over to position for some photographing.
And there's the photograph being taken, by Kenny's handler of hanging out in front of everything.
Wouldn't be a Kennywood visit without going to the century-old Jack Rabbit! We believe the neon has been replaced with LEDs simulating neon, but, well, that's better than losing even the styling of neon.
Also wouldn't be much of a Kennywood visit without getting to Thunderbolt! Here I remember that I can zoom in to make a more dramatic picture than the very reasonable safety barriers would allow me to do.
A twenty-minute wait for Thunderbolt is reasonable and yet by specifying it's 21 minutes I'm forced to wonder about the algorithm that's giving dubiously sensible precision.
Spare train on Thunderbolt which has got riding in it a large husky plush and, looks like in front of them, a carton of doughnuts set on the train's floor.
Trivia: A year after the end of the US Civil War some 2,778 of the roughly nine thousand post offices in the Confederate states had been reopened, but 60,000 of the seventy thousand miles of post roads were re-established. Source: The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Life, Wayne E Fuller.
Currently Reading: Archaeology, November/December 2025. Editor Jarrett A Lobell.
