Eight Blind Mice - Part One

We have mice in our house.
We've known it for weeks. The scratches in the walls at night that make Roxy and Toby jump up and bark like crazy. The little holes left in packets of pasta in the cupboard. And the time that a mouse shot across the kitchen and scared the hell out of Nana while she was visiting.
Yup, we had mice.
So, when Roxy suddenly found the vaccuum cleaner fascinating, we suspected that mice might be the culprits again. She would spend hours sniffing it, circling it, growling.
Jess was sure there was a mouse in there. I thought it was impossible - after all, we'd used the vaccuum, if there was a mouse in there it surely wouldn't have survived.
Well, one Tuesday night Jess decided it was time to have a look. The puppies went outside, the vaccuum was opened and the bag removed, and, lo and behold, she spotted a tiny nose poking out of the bag.
Surely this is a good thing! We've caught the mouse, now we can release it and we don't have to set any traps! Right?
We put the bag in a box and cut it open. No mouse, ready to scurry away. Instead, there is a nest. A nest with 8 tiny blind mouse pups.
Oh. Crap.
We can't put them back. The mother would abandon them now that they have our scent on them, and even if she didn't, we don't really want 8 more mice loose in the house. We can't release them, because they're way too young, they'll die.
Only one option.
All I can say is, thank goodness for the internet. It didn't take me very long at all to find out every thing I needed to know about hand raising baby mice.
Every few hours, day and night, they need to be fed milk. Not having a syringe or eyedropper, we improvised. I cut a piece of wire off the back of an old stereo and removed the wire from the casing. Once cleaned, the casing became a tiny straw.
A play-dough tub became a mouse home. An old nightgown, torn into strips, became their bed.
And so begins my journey as a surrogate mouse-mother.