I cannot give an accurate estimate of how many mice I have gone through in the last 5 years of my graduate work. Thousands, is the closest I can get. I have used thousands upon thousands of mice while studying HSV-1 replication and reactivation from latency. While there is a tissue culture model for HSV-1 lytic replication, there is none that can approximate viral establishment and reactivation from latency. We have no choice but to use mice to study HSV-1 latency, a huge and clinically relevant part of the viral life cycle that remains surprisingly undefined.
After completing my very first day of mouse work, I ran off to sob in the bathroom. It was too much for me to handle. [In my defense, the procedures performed in my lab are particularly gruesome.] In time, I became used to the animal work. I came to view the mice as simply another piece of laboratory equipment – kind of like a 50mL conical that is constantly trying to bite me. I had to get past the guilt, the pity, the fear and frankly, the disgust that washed over me whenever I started another experiment, in order to make progress on my thesis project.
Curiously enough, my comfort with mice and mouse work does not extend beyond the lab. A couple of years ago, I had the mixed blessing of catching a mouse in a mouse trap. The mouse was clearly and starkly dead, its head squished (sorry for the details). My reaction upon seeing the mouse surprised me – I completely lost it. I jumped on the couch in terror (just like one of the ladies in an episode of Tom and Jerry ... minus the apron and the updo) and prayed for someone, anyone, to come over and make it go away. When it became clear that no knight and no shining armor were available for my rescue, I disposed of the mouse (and the mousetrap) myself… but only after I covered the scene with a paper towel and turned my head as far as it would go in the opposite direction.
While I was blindsided by my own reaction to the dead mouse – given that I do much, much worse things to mice without flinching – I happily noted that there is still some humanity left in me. The death of a furry 50mL conical is a necessity and reality of my work. Random death and destruction are not, and encountering them still upsets me. Or grosses me out… I am not sure which.
Needless to say, I cleared out all the mousetraps and made friends with my mouse roommates. And then I moved to a mouse-free apartment.
i too cannot recall how many mice i have sacrificed during my postgraduate study! i hope i did not exceed the 1000-mark. our lab isolates foetal brains for primary neuronal culture. i was so tormented when i first learnt to kill a mouse foetus that i had nightmares for almost a month – images of the mother mouse sobbing over her decapitated babies and pleading with me… i am now trying to edge away from animal work. i cannot bear to be the executor of furry lab supplies for long…
Oddly, when I started the mouse work associated with my PhD I was completely cool about it. It was only after about the 100th one that it occurred to me to feel bad. There was something about the volume of dead animals that was upsetting.
At the moment, I have an adorable pet rat called ‘Rat’, and while working in the lab, I took home a pair of mice and one rat that were going to be sacrificed without being used. Despite this, the sight of a wild mouse or rat moving in a towards-me direction also makes me want to screech and jump on a chair!
Totally unrelated: In our protocols we list animals as ‘Reagents’. Given your 50ml-conical comparison, perhaps we should have put them under ‘Equipment’. :)
Oh Vivien, I do not envy you. Adult mice are one thing, but embryos are much another. I was supposed to learn how to excise DRG from embryonic rats but luckily for me (unluckily for my project) circumstances prevented it from happening. I have the worst dreams as well! Mine have mostly eviscerated and/or decapitated mice. Frequently, they are glowing green (GFP). I may not have needed to share all that. Sorry. Animal work really does start to weigh down on a person after a while.
Bronwen – Screech! That is an excellent word. I was definitely screeching when I saw my house-mouse. There is something truly disturbing about calling mice “reagents.” It makes them sound like something that will be used up, depleted, processed… which they will be, of course, I just don’t want to think about it in those terms.
I made a point of always acknowledging the mice when I sac’d them—either thanking them if they’d generated useful data or apologizing for not planning properly if I hadn’t. It kept them from turning into, as you say, 50mL conicals.
I’m quite happy to be done with those things, although I still wave hello when I see them running on the subway tracks.