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I scrambled back up off the ground, probably quicker than if I had actually been bitten, and
sat a few yards away breathing heavily. In my desire to show some level of support for one
of Natalie's insane rescue missions I had come this close to death. This close I tell you.
'Couldn't find the other one,' I said breathlessly to Natalie a few minutes later, 'I reckon the
snakes got it. I could have died.'
She looked at me, trying and failing to make sense of what I'd just said. 'Can you put the
kettle on, please?' she said eventually. 'And fill up a hot-water bottle.'
The emergency ward was already taking shape: an old shoebox had been converted and one
of Thérence's jumpers had been commandeered and cut up into smaller bits for them to sleep
on. Already Natalie was cleaning out the small bottles used to feed the cats when they were
first found. I blame the Internet for all this. It's all very laudable to go about thinking you can
rescue these creatures, and sometimes it's done successfully, but posting your results smugly
on the World Wide Web only encourages others to think they can do the same, Natalie in
particular. I didn't fancy their chances, and what if they did survive and they were male and
female? We'd be overrun! This really was madness in the extreme - part of me wanted the
poor things to pull through and reward Natalie for her efforts and part of me wanted them not
to, so as not to encourage this madness any further.
And what if they were both male? I have some experience of warring rodent brothers and it's
not pretty. When we were younger my sister and I had two gerbils, Sammy and Lee (Sammy
Lee was my dad's favourite footballer at the time); Lee, my sister's gerbil, was a large albino
and Sammy, mine, was clearly the runt of the litter and born without back feet. Yup, some-
times you're dealt a rough hand - or not, as the case may be. Anyway, seemingly everything
was going fine for a couple of months until one morning we came down and found Lee non-
chalantly eating Sammy for breakfast. It was a rude awakening to the rodent world.
One of Natalie's mice didn't last the night. It couldn't take any of the milk Natalie had paid
a fortune at the vet's for. She had also asked the vet if she had any mice as clients.
'No…' said the vet, racking her brains, 'only the ones used to feed pet snakes.' Seriously,
what kind of bedside manner is that?
After the demise of mouse number one (thankfully no names had been given yet), Natalie's
steely determination to succeed with number two took over. Every hour, on the hour the thing
was bottle fed and steadily, and quite obviously, was getting stronger. The hot-water bottle,
kept under the shoe box, was warmed repeatedly to keep a constant temperature; Natalie even
managed to make the thing do a poo by rubbing a warm cotton bud on its tummy, an event
that elicited a quite ridiculous level of celebration. Hopes were high.
By morning, however, the thing was dead and a sense of gloom pervaded the house. I don't
know why I said it, I just wanted to cheer everyone up I suppose; I wanted to lighten the
mood.
'Why don't we look into getting some chickens?' I said, hoping to sound vague.
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