December 17, 2021. My brother found me an early Christmas present in the backyard. The mouse had been dead for several hours at that point and ants were making themselves at home. I grabbed a plastic grocery bag and put it in the box.
December 27. The ants are messy customers. They didn't even finish their meal and left the leftovers on the table! No bugs seemed interested in the mouse, so it just marinated in its own juices and rainwater.
December 28. Hello again, weird moldy fungus! I still have absolutely no clue what this stuff is, and it only lasts a few days before disappearing.
January 3, 2022. The skin started pulling away from the mouth, exposing slivers of mandible. On the rest of the body, the fur was detaching and falling away.
January 6. More of the same, minutely so.
January 13. The skin peeled away some more and started distinctly slumping into the torso cavity. I started to realize just how tiny these bones are.
January 27. There was a little more progress made, but a few days later a car committed a hit-and-run with a deer and the box couldn't fit both animals. It was either the deer or the mouse, so I chucked the mouse.
Project eternally incomplete because this rodent is in a landfill.