Apparently Tennis Balls Provide Perfect Penthouses For Harvest Mice

You might not think there’s much to celebrate about a grubby old tennis ball, but these seemingly uninspiring objects are being put to use in an unusual way by one of our country’s cutest critters.

In autumn 2015, wardens at the RSPB’s Dee Estuary nature reserve discovered an empty harvest mouse nest, alerting the team that these tiny creatures – not usually found so far north – had moved into their Cheshire site. Since then, the team has come up with a creative way of providing more homes for their resident rodents: by using old tennis balls.

Getty Images | David Jones

Alasdair Grubb, the warden at Dee Estuary nature reserve, said: “Sadly harvest mice numbers are falling in the UK due to changing farming practices and other pressures on our countryside, so we were delighted to discover they had made a home at Burton Mere Wetlands and were eager to find out how many and whereabouts they were living.”

The harvest mouse was first discovered in the village of Selborne, Hampshire in 1767. Photograph: Natural England/Julian Dowse/PA

Harvest mice are the tiniest mammals known to the U.K., but they’re facing some big problems right now.

Reddit | LittleDank

According to The Guardian, they’ve seen serious losses to their habitats thanks to unspecified “modern farming practices,” and were once thought extinct in Hampshire, England where they were first discovered.

Fortunately, they were rediscovered in that region back in 2016.

To prevent such a dangerous drop in their numbers from happening again, the mission is now to protect them in their remaining habitats.

Reddit | 10s_pro

According to the BBC, the local Wildlife Trust has partnered with the All England Lawn Tennis Club to convert some of the 36,000 tennis balls that get used during the Wimbledon Tournament into small homes for the mice.

They may seem like a strange idea, but these tennis ball houses have many practical purposes.

Reddit | iklegemma

They’re being installed as a means of encouraging the harvest mice to breed, but they may also prove helpful in getting a sense of harvest mice numbers, which are currently unknown.

They were also designed to make the mice as safe as possible from predators.

Getty Images | David Jones

The mice average about six grams in weight, so conservationists cut a hole in each tennis ball that’s big enough for them to get in, but small enough to keep predators like birds of prey and weasels out.

They’re also kept on poles about two to five feet from the ground to make the weasels even less curious. And they’ve been placed in nesting areas where humans aren’t likely to travel.

23 Y.O. Daughter Who Lives At Her Dad’s House Rent-Free “Exposes” Him On Social Media For Excluding Her From Family Vacation By Not Buying Her A Plane Ticket

Each parent has a different parenting style. With each parenting style comes a different way of showing a misbehaving child their wrongdoing, along with a different way of correcting such wrongdoings.

This father had a very terrible daughter. In his post in the Am I The A-Hole subreddit, he began by describing his daughter as someone who had a bad attitude and barely made it through high school. This is in contrast with her younger sister, who was the cream of the crop. To reward the younger, he thought of taking her on a fully-paid vacation. When the older heard of it, she wanted to come but agreed that she would pay her expenses. Come the day of the trip, the older hadn’t paid for her trip yet because she assumed that her father would vouch for her. Follow the full story below!

More Info: Reddit

This father is asking if he was wrong for not fully paying for her daughter’s vacation




Image credits: u/Minute-Commin-6625

The father received split reactions from those who believed he did nothing wrong and those who believed he practiced favoritism.









Image credits: u/Minute-Commin-6625




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