Rodents

"[city laws were] designed to penalize homeowners for failing to take steps to prevent and control rodents"

"There are so many different roles that the rat plays in human life. When it is an object of admiration it is usually in, say, the show cage at an exhibition, or in a laboratory cage (where is has often been described as a hero/heroine or martyr to science). In the wild, or in the margins of human life, the rat is commonly loathed, the object of vermin control. Either way, one could say that it loses."

"Rats and mice are not generally regarded as pets, but as pests; they have few defenders. Yet the pain a rat or a mouse feels is every bit as real as that of any pet. In laboratories, they suffer, as anybody who has heard them moan, cry, whimper and even scream knows. The experimenters dissimulate about this by insisting that they are merely vocalising."

"If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you're in big trouble."

"How now? a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!"

"I'm a little hoarse tonight. I've been living in Chicago for the past two months, and you know how it is, yelling for help on the way home every night. Things are so tough in Chicago that at Easter time, for bunnies the little kids use porcupines."

"What! Would you slap the Porcupine? Unhappy child — desist! Alas! That any friend of mine Should turn Tupto-philist."

"The Deer don't dine When a Wolf's about, And the Porcupine Sticks his quill-points out."

"If you start throwing hedgehogs under me, I shall throw a couple of porcupines under you."

"Maine should be pleased that its animal is not a waverer, and rather than fight, lets the primed quill fall. Shallow oppressor, intruder, insister, you have found a resister."

"Any hound a porcupine nudges Can't be blamed for harboring grudges. I know one hound that laughed all winter At a porcupine that sat on a splinter."

"Never enter an arsekicking contest with a porcupine."

"And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porcupine."

"MOUSE, n. An animal which strews its path with fainting women."

"A cube of cheese no larger than a die May bait the trap to catch a nibbling mie."

"But, mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes o' mice an' men, Gang aft a-gly, An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain, For promis'd joy."

"You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes."

"A harvest mouse goes scampering by, With silver claws and silver eye"

"Rats and mice are not generally regarded as pets, but as pests; they have few defenders. Yet the pain a rat or a mouse feels is every bit as real as that of any pet. In laboratories, they suffer, as anybody who has heard them moan, cry, whimper and even scream knows. The experimenters dissimulate about this by insisting that they are merely vocalising."

"We cannot model everything in the mouse. If we want to move stem cell therapies from the lab to clinics and from the mouse to humans, we need to understand what these primate cells can and can't do. We need to study them in humans, including human embryos."

"Consider the little mouse, how sagacious an animal it is which never entrusts its life to one hole only."

"When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it."

"I think if she lived in A little shoe-house — That little old woman was Surely a mouse!"

"The city mouse lives in a house, The garden mouse lives in a bower"

"Mice are the key model we use to study mammalian development and we extrapolate from mice to humans. This work tells us that the extrapolation can be unreliable. I’m not saying that all work in mice doesn’t apply in humans, but there are fundamental differences we need to be wary of."

"I holde a mouses herte nat worth a leek. That hath but oon hole for to sterte to."

"The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken."

"It had need to bee A wylie mouse that should breed in the cat's eare."

"Once on a time there was a mouse," quoth she, "Who sick of worldly tears and laughter, grew Enamoured of a sainted privacy; To all terrestrial things he bade adieu, And entered, far from mouse, or cat, or man, A thick-walled cheese, the best of Parmesan."

"The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole Can never be a mouse of any soul."

"The mouse ne'er shunn'd the cat as thev did budge From rascals worse than they."

"If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."

"The early bird may catch the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."

"The general rule among hamsters appears to be bite first and ask questions afterward."

"Hamsters have a reputation for biting, which we feel is a defamation of character."

"The purpose of the current chapter is to summarize some of the information I have obtained on the capture and domestication history of the Syrian hamster, and perhaps to provide you with a new perspective and that will you give you something to muse on during seemingly endless hours of weighing hamsters adrenals, slicing hamster brains, or counting hamster ejaculations."

"... One day my dog treed a in a tall hickory that stood in a meadow on the side of a steep hill. To see what the squirrel would do when closely pressed, I climbed the tree. As I drew near he took refuge in the topmost branch, and then, as I came on, he boldly leaped into the air, spread himself out upon it, and, with a quick, tremulous motion of his tail and legs, descended quite slowly and landed upon the ground thirty feet below me, apparently none the worse for the leap, for he ran with great speed and eluding the dog took refuge in another tree."

"The largest squirrels living today are the s (Marmota) of North America and Asia, including the well-known yellow-bellied marmot of the Rocky Mountains and the woodchuck of eastern USA and Canada (the "groundhog" of February 2). One of the largest is the gray marmot, found in the mountains of Kazakhstan. Marmots put on weight before they enter hibernation, and may even double their weight, so the animals are heaviest at the end of the summer. At this time, the largest gray marmot may weigh more than 8 kg (18 lb). The largest tree squirrels, the giant tree squirrels of Southeast Asia ('), are not nearly as big as marmots, but they are still quite large—ranging from 2 kg (4.4 lb) up to 3 kg (6.6 lb). With their beautiful long tails and striking coloration, these squirrels are an impressive sight bounding through the trees. In contrast, the smallest squirrels are the pygmy tree squirrels of western Africa (') and Southeast Asia ('), which are smaller than some mice. The smallest adults of both genera average approximately 14 or 15 gm (roughly 0.5 oz)."

"Usually the red squirrel (Sciurus Hudsonius) waked me in the dawn, coursing over the roof and up and down the sides of the house, as if sent out of the woods for this purpose."

"The squirrels in their silver fur will fall Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot."

"The squirrel gloats on his accomplish’d hoard,"

"Up the oak-tree, close beside him, Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo, In and out among the branches, Coughed and chattered from the oak-tree, Laughed, and said between his laughing, “Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!”"

"Then said Hiawatha to him, “O my little friend, the squirrel, Bravely have you toiled to help me; Take the thanks of Hiawatha, And the name which now he gives you; For hereafter and forever Boys shall call you Adjidaumo, Tail-in-air the boys shall call you!”"

"’Spareth a squirrel that it nothing fears But steals the nut from underneath my thumb, And when I threat, bites stoutly in defence:"

"Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops,"

"Mossy-footed squirrels leap Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep:"

"From tree to tree the scampering squirrels run;"

"No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:"

"And the brisk squirrel sports from bough to bough,"