Pickle: The Mouse Behind the Sensation

Fabulous, famed, furry. All this and more can be used to describe Room 3111’s most glamorous resident: Pickle the mouse. One of the newest members of the Central Maroons’ family, Pickle has risen to great heights of popularity. I got the privilege of getting the inside scoop on the radiant rodent and now can share her story with the Chronicle’s audience.

I met Pickle one otherwise uneventful Tuesday afternoon. Her tank was tucked away on a table in the side of the classroom, an oasis hidden in plain sight. Pickle was hidden from view, resting after a hard day, and couldn’t be bothered to show up for something as superfluous as her own interview. So instead, I got to talk with her owner and Central chemistry teacher, Ms. Dickinson.

Pickle came into Ms. D’s life one morning at 7:15 A.M. “There was a knock on my door and I was like ‘Who’s here at 7:15?’” Ms. Dickinson narrated. “So I popped my head out and Ms. Kodes was standing there with a little brown live trap and a mouse in it and she [asked] ‘What do we do?’ So I said ‘Well, we can release it or we can let it go in the school, or I can keep it.’” Knowing that if let out in the school Pickle would likely be killed by the janitors and that approximately 80 percent of relocated animals end up dying, Ms. Dickinson went out to buy a tank, food, and everything else needed to welcome Pickle as the new class pet.

Pickle instantly won over Ms. D, who in her words is “totally a sucker for animals.” “I have a zoo at home because of it,” she joked. However, while Pickle is Ms. D’s first wild caught mouse, she isn’t the first mouse she’s ever had as a pet. Ms. D used to have snakes that ate live rodents, and she disliked having to feed them. “The pet store owner thought it was really funny that I thought mice were cute,” she explained. “So he would give me really cute mice when he knew I had to feed the snakes. Then I ended up with a colony of mice at home for a while…because I couldn’t feed the cute ones to the snakes.”

Central’s faculty was not at all surprised at Pickle’s adoption, knowing Ms. Dickinson’s fondness for mice. The students' reactions on the other hand were a mixed bag: “Some were very excited [and] others were a little weirded out by it. But everyone got really into naming her!”

Now you may be wondering; How exactly did this dynamic diva get her name? Well, the process consisted of several Google Forms, Google Classroom questions, and many classroom suggestions. In the first round of the selection, over 50 names were submitted and Ms. D narrowed it down to a top 25 that then was voted on. Finally, the top three remained and the name that had the most votes regardless of it’s rank should have been picked. Much to everyone’s surprise, there was a dead tie between “Fish” and “Pickle!” So another round of voting commenced and Pickle won by a landslide.

Pickle is thriving these days. She hasn’t met any of Ms. D’s other pets and will stay in her classroom tank for the rest of her days. When asked if Pickle had a favorite teacher or student, Ms. D responded that “[Pickle] wants nothing to do with people.” Needless to say, our favorite mouse is perfectly content with her see-saws fashioned out of paper towel tubes and her “party sticks”: little pieces of dowel rod covered in colorful paper confetti that Pickle loves to chew up and drag around her home. Once Ms. Dickinson found Pickle hanging upside down, chewing down a toy hung to the ceiling! “I did not get the phone out fast enough for that,” Ms. D said. All this to say that Pickle is unapologetically living her best life and we at the Chronicle love to see it. If you stop by Room 3111 and manage to see Pickle out, don’t be shy to give her a wave.