jackson.

i joke that i'm part of a 2-car family. it's true... a family of 3 made permanent residence at my place. but i'm the only driver, and the only one with a prehensile thumb.

yesterday we had a death in the family - my almost-2-y.o. mouse, named jackson, died. i'm supposing of natural causes due to old age. he was from the c57bl6 strain (i adopted him), so he wasn't the most friendly of mice. but i'd known him since he was born 7/4/04, so he liked me well enough i suppose. jackson enjoyed eating spinach, sleeping in the little red plastic house, and running around in his yellow ball. i think riley liked his company - there were a lot of times he wanted to spin jackson around in his ball. but i tried to keep those to a minimum. within the last 6-8 months, he developed a weird hole in his left ear. you can't really see it in the lower picture, but it was like someone cut out a piece on the tip of the ear. i knew he was starting to get old when i put him in the yellow ball, and he didn't really want to run around very much. during the last week, i noticed that he wasn't hanging out much in his little red house - instead, he'd made a little nest from "enrichment material" and pine bedding just next to the food area.

pictures above: top - 8/10/04; bottom - 1/23/06.

farewell, little friend.

jackson lin -- 7/4/04 - 6/15/06.