… quoth the raven, “please, some more.”
Ha, it reminds me of when we left our pet mice at my parents’ house while we went on holiday.
We showed them how much food to put in the food bowl, and said if they ever wanted to treat the mice, they could put in a little bit of lettuce or a slice of cucumber.
When we came back a fortnight later, we found all three of the mice looking healthy, doing normal mice things. My parents were concerned, though. They mentioned that even though they refilled it every day, the mice had barely touched any of their food.
This surprised me because normally they eat almost everything. This is by design - the amount we put in takes into account that the mice will eat the bits they like best first, but because it’s nutritionally balanced, they need to eat the other stuff too.
I wondered if the mice were unnerved or something by being moved into my parents’ house, so I asked if they ever put anything in as a treat. I was told, yes, and the mice always ate it all.
It turned out that I hadn’t been clear about what a “little bit” meant and they’d been giving them one or two entire leaves of lettuce a day. The mice weren’t touching their food because they’d been living a Willy Wonka-esque existence of having room-sized treats delivered to them on a daily basis.
I don’t know much at all about mice but it’s weirdly interesting to me that mice apparently love lettuce. I’ve always been told that mice have a similar metabolism to humans since we’re both omnivores. But if I gave a human a whole head of lettuce on top of some normal food, I know what would be left over at the end of the day.
True!
Although, for a clearer comparison, it might help if I described what their normal food was.
From what I remember (it was about 20 years ago!), and ranked from their favourite to least favourite, the food mix consisted of:
- Peanuts
- Yellow flakes and green flakes (which I suspect started off as corn and peas)
- Scratchy red things (similar size and shape to a chunky watch battery)
- Scratchy brown things (similar shape but flatter than the red ones)
- Dark brown stick things
I guess the closest food we have is dry cereal. If I just had a huge bowl of mixed dry cereal to communally eat from for the entire day, and then one day a whole lettuce was next to the bowl, I’d probably try to eat as much of it as I could before it was taken away too.
Fois gras
