Animal shelter staff got more than they bargained for when a pet owner reached out about a mice problem. The pet owner revealed his pet mice collection has grown beyond his control. In fact, he had over a thousand mice due to the rodents breeding and multiplying so quickly.
The unidentified pet owner went to the New Hampshire Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals with his problem. He told them that he had 150 mice before revealing he had 150 tanks of the rodents. The pet owner then gave them 400 of the animals.
Hundreds more wait to be rescued from the man's home, calling it "terrible living conditions."
"We have never seen anything like this," said Savannah Alcero, Director of Animal and Veterinary Services at the NHSPCA. "And the longer we wait to get all of the mice out of their terrible living conditions ... the greater the likelihood is that the numbers will continue to grow. With a gestation period of just around 20 days, mice can reproduce at an alarming rate."
Mice Issue
Animal shelter staff discovered that the owner crammed the animals into plastic tubes. He also didn't clean the tubes in a long time. The pet owner failed to separate the animals by sex, leading to rapid breeding.
"The mice were living in filthy plastic tubs that hadn't been cleaned in what appeared to be a long time," the New Hampshire Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said.
Things are so bad that the animal shelter even needs help with all of the rodents, asking New England for help. They're trying to find homes for the various rodents as quickly as possible.
:isa Dennison, executive director of the New Hampshire SPCA, said the most they took in previously was around 100.
"Even in the short time that we've had them, many of these mice have given birth," Dennison told the AP. "It's an exponential problem that keeps growing. It does happen where you take a large number, but even when we took in 54 goats or we took in 39 cats, I mean, those are still large numbers, but much more manageable as you can imagine than hundreds and hundreds of mice."
