Field or House mice?

[zek 0]

My neighbour found these when tidying up her garden shed a couple of days ago.

 

Are they House or Field/Wood mice?

 

A pet rat which has young of a similar size has accepted 4 of the older ones!!

 

thanks.

Zek.

Edited May 3, 2007 by zek

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

Bugger.

[zek 0]

Sorry about that. I've added the photo. Thanks for your help - I'm thinking Wood mouse.

 

In your job, have you ever come across the Black Rat (Rattus rattus) - not just a black coloured Brown Rat (R. norvegicus)?

 

thanks again,

Zek.

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

Chaos! Oh well. At least ye saw the shots I'd put up, mate. I don't like showing gratuitous dead thing shots anyway. Let the droolers go and experiance it for themselves. This isn't a porn site

 

Now, looking at those? Yeppers. My money too is on Woodies. It's partially the tone of the fur colour. But much more their apparrant bulk at even so young an age. I mean, they look like they're going to be chunky little buggers. Wood Mice are quite a size, compared to dinky little House Mice.

 

Black Rat (Rattus rattus)? No, mate. Not personally. Never worked the areas where they occur these days. Nor have I ever caught a particularly black Rattus norvegicus. Though a colleague of mine once showed a 'Brown' Rat whose fur was black as pitch.

 

Said to him at the time; I'd have had it mounted!

[J Darcy 5,871]

I would put my money on wood mouse. and lovelly creatures they are too...

[juckler123 707]

Sorry about that. I've added the photo. Thanks for your help - I'm thinking Wood mouse.

 

In your job, have you ever come across the Black Rat (Rattus rattus) - not just a black coloured Brown Rat (R. norvegicus)?

 

thanks again,

Zek.

 

Id say wood mouse too in nearly half a century on this island ive only ever seen two colonies of true black rats and i believe both are still there and are protected even though one colony is in a bakery[kept quiet] just outside mansfield and the other one was on the river trent at an old roman settlement above cromwell weir

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

Ye'd be surprised, Jukes. " On this island " would then, for a start off exclude the small, off shore island where there was a well known colony. Last I heard of that one, the govt. were planning to have it wiped out - to protect sea birds. The inhabitants of the island themselves were up in arms about that idea. They considered them their rats and said the rats and birds had always coexisted. Don't know how that one ended up.

 

I also spoke to a guy who was kept very busy ~ back around the seventies, I think? ~ handling R. rattus. In fact, I couldn't swear it wasn't in your secret Bakery! I just can't remember the details now. But Manchester doesn't half ring a bell.

 

Mheanwhile, I'm reliably informed by certain of my colleagues that, should I want a genuine specimen of R. rattus, to have mounted for display, I need only hop back on the ferry, only head not for Holyhead but Liverpool. Seems the rats in Liverpool Docks these days are probably R. rattus by majority!

 

I should think I have something here, in the industry litrature. Only I have quite a bit of that sort of thing and really haven't the time to start sifting through it all. I also have some decades old stuff too. I know for a fact I have something from the old MAFF. I'm sure that pertains to the known distribution of R. rattus some decades ago.

 

Ye know; I remember actually seeing live ones offered for sale in the Exchange & Mart? In the same column as Lions, Cougars, Harvest Mice and Red Squirrels, FFS!

 

Christ, Those were the days!