Blackie
07/2005 - 27/07/2007

Earlier today, Blackie passed away.  Although he wasn’t sick in the same way that Whitie had been, he was not in the best of health for the past few months either.  Even so, he was extremely long-lived, for a mouse.

In contrast to Whitie, Blackie was an extrovert right from day one.  He ran on the wheel as soon as we placed it in the tank, and seemed to enjoy it’s exclusivity, but after Whitie started on the wheel, Blackie seemed to lost interest.

However, Blackie loved running around the house in his transparent ball; he was forever bumping into this or that and really seemed to enjoy his time exploring in the ball.  The recommended time to spend in one of those balls is around 20 minutes, but Blackie could easily run around for an hour without getting bored at all.

Blackie had a great trait, where he would stand on his hind legs and paw at the glass of his tank as we approached.  It was as though he was excited to see us.

Blackie is buried just beside Whitie in our backyard.  RIP Blackie.

Whitie
07/2005 - 25/04/2007

Yesterday, sadly, one of our two mice — Whitie — passed away. He had been in poor health for a long time, and had deteriorated more and more until finally, he passed away around 10:00-11:00am.

When Whitie first arrived at our place, he was a much smaller mouse and a very timid one at that; he didn’t do much other than hide. Eventually, he discovered the joys of running on his mouse wheel, and seemed to spend much of the next twelve months on the wheel.

Whitie stopped running on his wheel only when he became too large to do so, which prompted us to buy a much larger wheel. While Whitie and Blackie were together, they each took one side of the larger wheel as “their side”, and even after we had to separate them, Whitie continued to use the same side of the wheel rather than positioning himself in the centre.

Even after Whitie was too sick to run on his wheel — he seemed to have developed arthritis in his back legs — he still persisted and tried to run as much as he could.

We buried Whitie at the base of one of our trees outside. Blackie was in attendance. RIP Whitie.

Since I never bother watching the news, I don’t know about certain things happening around the world that other people who do watch (or listen, or read) the news might know about.

So, I’m just letting you know that the King is dead. I didn’t really see much of Graham Kennedy’s early stuff, except in clip form, though I do know he paved the way for a lot of Australian TV.

Long live the King (of comedy)!