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BISMARK, N.D. (WDAY) — A Bismarck mom took her children shopping Monday, Oct. 8, only to find wildlife in a pair of winter boots they were trying on.
With rain and snow already here, Shasta Riederer of Bismarck headed to K-Mart with her two boys for some snow boot shopping. But she and the boys got quite a shock they found more than one kind of fur inside those boots.
Talon and Deakon Riederer along with their mom Shasta were not sure what those little things were rolling out of the new winter boot.
“He goes, ‘Mom, look,’ Shasta Riederer said. “I thought it was Vienna sausages rolling around the floor until they started moving, but then we heard them squeaking.”
They were no Vienna sausages, but a family of mice. And not just two, but seven and the mother.
The boys pleaded with their mom to take them home.
“They are cute, I want to touch that one,” her sons told her.
“Super grossed out, but they are cute,” Shasta Riederer said.
“Mom, please? They don’t have diseases,” the boys pleaded.
K-Mart in Bismarck didn’t want the mice, so the boys and their mom brought the mice home.
“I let the kids take them home, let them get a fish tank for them, kids put them in there and they were happy ever since,” Shasta said.
They will be released into the wild soon.
“So proud of them that they have that kind of compassion,” Shasta Riederer said. “That they are willing to save mice when it would have grossed everybody else out.”
While there are no laws or regulations about housing or keeping mice, Department of Health officials do have concerns about diseases that mice can carry.
Good hand-washing is the key, they said. By the way, they got the snow boots too.
K-Mart in Bismarck told WDAY-TV it went through all the boot boxes and there was no sign of other mice. But to be sure, pest control was brought in to spray.
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