[Gpdd] HEALTH: Mouse in my pig cage!!

[L M Hunter]

Please don't read this if you're squeamish.
   
  Okay, I need some advice...I have always sort of worried what would happen if a mouse or rat or stinging/biting insect got in with my piggies.  At our old place we knew we had mice in the ceiling and I had seen rats outside the neighbors' house.  Then we moved to a high-rise and have no rodent problem whatsoever (except the rodents that squeal for food:)  
   
  So this morning I'm in the kitchen doling out the morning ration of hay--Kaytee Timothy hay, pigs love it.  We used to get the huge bale of hay from Sweet Meadows which they REALLY loved, but I found teeeeeeeny little bugs in it.  Probably no big deal but I was paranoid that they might be a parasite of some sort, or that they might mature into big bugs.-- anyway, I look in the kitchen cage where Pippi and Sophie are waiting very impatiently and I see something rather odd.  
   
  At first I think it it a large wood chunk from the litter, but then it becomes obvious that it didn't come from the litter, it came from the hay (as it had hay pieces stuck to it).  I pick it up...and it's a dead (very flattened) mouse!  It must have gotten stuck in the hay smusher in the processing plant.  
   
  Now initially, I am sad for this less-than-two-inch, probably-was-really-cute-before-it-was-flattened creature, but then my concern grew.  I didn't see any teeth marks on it and my pigs didn't seem concerned by it, but what if they tasted it a little?  I can't be sure that this animal died of the actual hay squishing or if it died of a disease and got smushed where it lay.  
   
  Should I be concerned in any way? Would there be any sort of disease that a mouse could pass on, even though it's been dead from probably quite some time?  Is it possible that it's inside matter had contaminated the hay?  (I didn't actually see any inside matter, but it's probably been dead for awhile.)  Should I throw out the hay and call the company?  Should I send them the dead mouse?  Should I call the vet?  
   
  I'm a little paranoid...
   
  Has this happened to anyone before? 
   
  Lyndsay, Mike, and the Pittsburgh Piggies
   
  --By the way, I'm not sure that I posted the adoption of said piggies (Pippi and Sophie).  We felt that we would be doing right by our beloved Lucy by adopting another piggy, and we fell in love with two at a local rescue.  They are doing great, as they were cagemates at the rescue, but Pip doesn't get along with ANY of our other 5 pigs, so we built a second cage in the kitchen.

		
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