Giving the Gift of Rodentia

During the rodent year I saw many rodents. I read books with rodent characters. I watched movies with rodent sidekicks. I traveled with a stuffed prairie dog and have a stuffed beaver, a stuffed rat and 3 stuffed marmots around my house. I did not, however, eat many rodent things or wear many rodents. Family members helped diminish this deficiency with Christmas gifts.

Prairie Quilter gave me a tasteful new mouse barrette which I'm likely to sport tomorrow for the first day of Vertebrate Zoology. (Thanks Prairie Quilter!)

My parents gifted the Mister with some Marmot Salve from Austria. Yes, Murmeltier Salbe is made from marmot oil. No, I'm not sure exactly how one acquires marmot oil, but I am fairly certain that live marmots don't surrender, or render, their fat willingly. A gift that just falls on the cool side of the creepy-cool divide is made all the more amusing because this is not the first gift of genuine Austrian marmot salve my household has been given (my brother's family also travels frequently to Austria) and the price sticker was still attached. I find it somewhat gratifying that marmots don't part with their oil for some cheap potion but horrifying that my parents paid that for goofy marmot salve.

In any case, marmot salve is a white cream with a strong smell of menthol (although it also contains a huge number of alpine herbs including gaultheria and gentian) that is supposed to ease aching joints and cure all ills. It does tingle refreshingly when applied to sore backs. (Thanks Mom, Dad, J+C!)

The true intellectual siblings-in-law found sugar mice for me in St. Louis. Unlike those pictured from floo network, my sugar mice are on sticks, like little pink lollipops, rather than with string tails, which seems to be the thing in the UK based on my quick web-search. In any case, sugar mice are just that: sugar held together in the form of a mouse with minimal additional flavoring. As one might expect, sugar mice taste horrible. I think I report this without offending my siblings-in-law because my siblings-in-law are not stupid. One look at the list of sugar mice ingredients and it's obvious that the are not going to be mouth-watering confectionery. Of course, my siblings-in-law would also know that I would desperately want to try a sugar mouse, if I had known they existed and I'm very excited that I did. (Thanks sibs-in-law!) I just need to figure out what to do with the rest. Perhaps I shall use them to sweeten tea?