Rodney the Ravaging Rodent

I am a humble house mouse,
Rodney is my name,
My favourite lodging is your house,
Cohabitation is my game.
I am remarkably well equipped,
For living in your house,
So I thought I’d share some trivia,
About my kind, the humble mouse.
My kind originated in Asia,
Spreading centuries ago,
We then spread with the explorers,
On their voyages we did go.
Once inside your house,
We’re difficult to control,
But we’re just trying to survive,
To make it through life whole.
We are prolific breeders,
Big families we often need,
We have six to ten litters a year,
That’s forty mouths to feed.
We can have a litter at two months,
Three weeks is the gestation,
We can then rebreed immediately,
And continue to dominate the nation.
Food, clothing, furniture and books,
Though not our staple diet,
Can be supplemented with electrical cord,
Sometime you might try it.
However, the last one’s if we’re desperate,
If our need for food is higher,
Because such actions kill the appliance,
And start the odd fire.
We are a very curious sort,
Daily exploring our territory,
But my family don’t venture far,
Only ever eight yards from me.
We like to explore new things,
These we like to see,
And, unlike our feline foes,
We’re not killed by curiousity.
We are sporadic in our feeding,
Particularly when there’s lots of food,
We take a little, but quite often,
To stuff ourselves is rude.
We visit food up to 30 times,
0.15 of a gram is all we take,
It might not seem much to you,
But we’re little for goodness sake!
If humans can provide warmth and food,
We can survive almost anywhere,
When humans explore the ice caps,
You will even find us there.
Unlike the teeth of other mammals,
Our front teeth don’t stop growing,
If we didn’t gnaw so much,
Then up our butts they’d be going.
Mouse bones have been found in caves,
Where the cavemen dwelled,
Language as yet would be undeveloped,
So I wonder what they yelled?
We can jump down 12 feet without injury,
And jump 12-inches on the vertical,
We can also scale rough vertical surfaces,
And thrice our weight we can pull.
Our numbers are quite simply legion,
Through all times they have grown,
We do 500 million dollars damage,
Yearly in Australia alone.
So, I hope you’ve enjoyed this chat,
This little mouse life map,
And enjoy that moment even more,
As you empty me from the trap.

The title came to me first. For some reason I was thinking of a mouse and thought that a semi-factual poem might make a nice change. So, I did some research and tied it all together in poetic form. I might even use it with kids one day.