This article is from the Fall 2003 AFRMA Rat & Mouse Tales news-magazine.

By Helen Pembrook

Lauren Jones, Austin, TX
QI am in 3rd grade, about to be in the 4th grade. I would like to get some information on rats and mice that would make good pets. If you can, would you please try to give me some free stuff so that I can find more information? Because I used to have a mouse but not a rodent. Her name was Mary but we do not know what happened to her. Well, it was a surprising day when I got her because I had come home from a free gym class and my mom picked me up and she said, “Do you want a mouse?” I said, “Yes,” so we went to Pet Corral. We saw so many different mouses, so I picked out a moulty colored one.

When I came home one night from going to have lunch with my mom, well, I was with my dad and sister, we went into the office where she lived on top of an old plastic shoe rake that was blue, red, and yellow. Her cage was not heavy. She was a very active little mouse. She had a small wheel she could fit through it when she was small. We went in to my room and kept talking about mice. We kept screaming when someone’s dad came to pick her up. We took her down stairs but she was too jumpy so she got loose and ran all around the house but my mom caught her. My granny called her a rodent. She thought it was funny. I got mad whenever she came over she would say where is the rodent. And now she calls my gecko a rodent too.

If you have any free stuff for geckos would you please try to send me some for my gecko. She is about to die after we have taken good care of her. She is like 4 months old only about 4 inches long. She is still a baby. I call her Lize. I still think she is too young to die.

Well, I would like more information about rats and mice and geckos. If you have any on geckos I would like some so we do not have to trade her in for a new one.

AAFRMA, apparently now known as the: “American Fancy Rodentia Miscellanea Association” From the Webster’s International Dictionary (2nd Edition) “Rodent: One of the Rodentia.” “Rodentia: The largest order of mammals comprising relatively small gnawing animals with a single pair of upper incisors which grow from persistent pulps and are enameled chiefly in front, producing a chisel-shaped edge.”

Mice ARE rodents, along with rats, hamsters, voles, moles, chinchillas, porcupines, beavers, squirrels, chipmunks, capybaras and muskrats, to name only a few.

Geckos are reptiles, and like ALL reptiles, need lots and lots of special housing and care or they die. Their environment has to be the right size, the right temperature, the right humidity, have the right kind of light, the right kind of strata, and the right kind of decor. They need the right kind of food and the right kind of vitamins. If ANY ONE of the things that they need is not right, they die.

Trade in both pets and get a stuffed animal instead.