My baby just put a dead shrew in her mouth

[BaylisAndHardon]

Posting in AIBU for traffic, and to ask for a hand hold while I get over this horror.

We live in an old victorian house (with many mouse holes) in the country and have a cat to manage the rodent populus, but he also sometimes brings things in . I always check the floor of the snug for anything and disinfect/scrub if he has before putting her down to play.

But this time he put it under a toy in her play pen and I didn't see it and she picked it up and put it in her mouth before I could lauch myself at her to get it out. I am horrified.

Messages of support please. Also accounts of children who have survived to adulthood after putting disgusting things in their mouths. Tell me your worst. I need to hear it.

Oh, I forgot, DS also drank the dirty water from a fish tank water change. Not once, but several times. Then threw a massive tantrum when we moved him away from it and kept trying to bolt back to the bucket with his jug in his hand.

Shrews are said to taste very bitter and so cats don't eat them. So I doubt whether your DC swallowed anything. But it's naturally concerning. This is an American site, but shrews are extraordinary and fascinating:
www.lowcountryinstitute.org/shrews

I was once bitten - surprisingly deep and bloody - by a very live and quite big vole that my cat had brought in and our local district nurse insisted on giving me tetanus booster.

We were visiting a tourist attraction and my toddler brother managed to slip away from my parents. When they found him (two minutes later!), he was happily eating chewing gum that he'd found on the bathroom floor. As in, a glob of chewing gum that had been spat out at some point.

He's now 24 and healthy as a horse

Trying not to laugh as I remember the horrors! My 10 month year old had something in his mouth and I got him to spit it out and it was a mouse's stomach that the cat had brought in!! He's now a healthy 23 year old and laughs like a drain whenever I mention it.

My brother was caught stuffing handfuls of rabbit poo into his mouth, he was fine.

My son was 2 and I dropped him at my parents for the day. They were going out to the railway on a long day out. I took his timberland boots off and left them by the door

When I picked him up he was hobbling slightly. My mother said he had been complaining about his feet earlier on as they had walked so much but he was fine now.

Put him in the car. Got him home

Took his boots off

In the bottom of 1 boot was a mouse that was totally swashed flat- completely flat. The cat must have dropped it in there when the boots were outside.

Over the course of the day as he walked it squashed flatter and flatter.

My mum had a dead mouse tied to a bit of string as a toy when she was a child, she would put it in her dolls prom and lush it around and then drag it around on the string 😂 she survived.

God I could fill a wheelie bin with the rank stuff I’ve pulled out of my kids’ mouths. Chewed remains of a large black beetle, a single leg of what I assume was a daddy long legs, a cigarette butt.... shrew still wins though that’s one for the grandkids

Ds aged 1-2 ate half a worm, licked the pig, toddled in with a dead mouse in each hand shouting 'look mummy mouses', and put a mostly dead fledgling in his bed as it looked poorly...he is fine .. odd but fine

Oh you will love this.

Dd, 3, in the park, sees a smear of brown ice cream on a park bench, puts her finger in it and licks. Nope. Bird poo. Yuk. (she ALWAYS had to taste everything, always prone to licking things, on the beach she would make 'mud pies' out of sand and repeatedly convince herself it must taste nice, even though she has literally no imagination).

My son went to the playground with his dad. Came back. Apparently everything all fine. Then putting him to bed he told me "he was very sad about the poorly mouse" me "?He then explained that hed found a poorly daddy mouse that wasnt moving so he'd picked it up and kissed it to make it better but it still wasnt moving and then his daddy had come and shouted at him to put it down. I asked how he knew it was a daddy mouse "because it was big like a daddy". Me to his father "Did our son kiss a dead rat when you were out with him"

@BigSandyBalls2015 at least they were sharing. Clearly well brought up

One of my DC ate half of a dead moth when he was a toddler.

After reading the rest of this thread, I think we got off lightly

I walked into the bathroom to find my toddler DC using the loobrush to clean their teeth. No ill effects and still going strong a couple of decades later!

My brother ATE a dead mouse when he was 1. My mum noticed its tail sticking out of his mouth. Apparently I (aged 3) was dancing around gleefully shouting HE’S EATEN A MOUSE! with great joy. He survived btw.

My son at about 14 months- he was walking through the shopping centre with me when I lifted him into his pushchair as he was tired. I noticed that he had something stuck to the bottom of his shoe- it might have been a dried apricot but who knows...
In the time it took to get a wipe to get rid of it, he pulled it off and ate it 🤮 .

He also used to regularly stick his head in the water fountain displays at the garden centre.

He is now 10 and still alive and well!

I asked my doctor what would happen if my baby daughter ate mouse guts. She said probably nothing, and working wouldn't necessarily be needed. So I wouldn't worry.

My db ate cat food.
My ds ate his own poo as a toddler.
Dd liked licking windows on the train.
None of them were ever poorly as a result.

Also when I was about 5 and not allowed chewing gum (for obvious reasons) I decided to take matters into my own hands and found a piece that someone had chewed and discarded in a supermarket carpark. I still remember picking off the worst bits of grit and happily putting it in my mouth. I was most displeased when my mum discovered it and made me throw it away. Kids are gross

DD tried to eat a cow pat when she was 9
months (we were at a festival so she probably thought it was the thing to do). I think I fished it all out, she spent the entire weekend eating the grass though.

A friends DS came out of the wooded area at school once carrying a HUGE dead rat... I am so glad that I wasn't there that day.

@Lovemusic33

My mum had a dead mouse tied to a bit of string as a toy when she was a child, she would put it in her dolls prom and lush it around and then drag it around on the string 😂 she survived.

🤣🤣🤣

DD recently told me she often used to eat the grit out of salt bins because it tasted nice and Granny frequently forgot to dilute squash so she would drink it neat.

This would be one of the few instances I would recommend cleaning her mouth with an antibacterial wipe.

I'm sorry OP but this is one of the funniest things I read all day

God I can't imagine how awful that must have been for you to see, you poor bugger! It'll make a cracking story for when she's grown up though!

I distinctly remember my mum fishing caterpillars out of my brother's mouth when he was little... He's 28 and fit as anything now, runs marathons, climbs mountains lol. Maybe I should have eaten a couple...

My dd licked a stinking, rotten limpet (inside!) AND she had a compromised immune system at the time. She was fine.