A photographer has built the most adorable mini village of log cabins – complete with post boxes and dining tables – so he can take pictures of their tiny residents: a group of backyard garden mice.
Simon Dell first started building his tiny Shire in spring 2018 after he spotted a wild mouse in his back garden.
“I could see the cats sitting just feet away from him at the other side of a fence,” said Dell. “So I piled some small logs around a box as a home for the mouse and covered it with moss and straw to give him a little shelter.
“I then put some wire fencing around the fence so there was no way the cats could get to the mouse,” he added, “and we decided to name him George.”
After saving the mouse, Simon began to add more homes next door to the makshift neighborhood – and within days, more mice had moved in, looking for creature comforts.
The wildlife photographer began adding more to the tiny houses, fashioning detailed dining tables, washing lines, motorbikes, and even a weights set for the resident rodents.
“The mice seem to love the log pile homes so they wasted no time in moving in,” says Dell.
“They are still wild animals who run away if I get too close, most of the time I just sit a couple feet away with a zoom lens, they seem happy to pop in and out,” he added. “The only food I give them is often all natural and pick up berries and fruits that grow in the local area.”
Simon now has nine mice living in his back garden village, but he believes that one of the females is pregnant so may have to start building more.
Cute until they start appearing inside your house and your loaf of bread is half eaten.
Lots of people will post negative comments. You be you. They are clever works of art, and St. Francis himself could not have done better by “brother and sister mouse”. Tolkien would be delighted.
I love this and so will my niece. She has a farm now.
Lovely idea – why shouldn’t mice have a right to live a good life too? 🙂
What a fun way to spend your spare time!