Stuart the mouse excited popcorning

Update Thank you to the viewers that have shared their knowledge and experience with rodents so far. A couple of commenter's have pointed out that Stuart is, in fact, not any kind of mouse at all but a Hispid Cotton Rat. Now that I've had a chance to look into it a bit, I'm sure this is what species he is (we are located in South Texas). Apparently, the males of this species are solitary and often only join females for reproduction and I don't need more of these guys because, since we've moved out of the city, I have tons of Stuart's extended family running around my property causing all sorts of nuisance.

For those of you mentioning his small enclosure, what can be seen in this video is only one of a few "houses" connected by a pretty complex tube system. I do agree that more space is best and I have a large enclosure that I'm working on retrofitting to use the tubes because he loves them so much. I'll get another video soon once we've finished the setup. Thank you!


I admittedly don't know a ton about mice and their behavior but between the daily interaction we have with him and the constantly changing habitat/contents, he seems to be a pretty happy guy. I mentioned it in an earlier video but he and 3 siblings were abandoned and had started to get bitten by fire ants at about a week old. We brought them all home and Stuart was the only one that survived - he was also the only one that seemingly avoided bites. We had originally planned to release him but I think we missed out on the window because he just seemed too attached and dependent.