Missing: 3124
‘3122, 3123...3125. Where is 3124? The dosing form says there should be a 3124,’ stated Gorman, jabbing his finger at the clip board.
I pivoted my body to look at him face on. The respirator hood wasn’t flexible enough for me to turn my head only. Now that my transparent plastic face mask framed Gorman’s figure, I could see that he was frantically scanning the dosing forms for any indication that 3124 had died and was no longer expected to be in his cage.
‘Relax, Gorman. He’s probably hiding in his litter. They burrow when they don’t feel well.’
Gorman put his clipboard down on the steel table behind us, next to the syringes and sealed glass bottles of dosing serum, and pulled out the clear plastic tub that should have housed the mouse in question. He rummaged his double gloved hand through the wood shaving bedding, to no avail. He turned to me and held his hands up in question. The hissing of the respirators attached to our protective hoods made hearing each other a chore, so we pantomimed when we could.
I waved him back from the caging rack and pulled 3124’s entire tub off the hanging rail. Sometimes the tricky ones squeezed out the back if you didn’t get the tub snapped fully into the rack. Setting the tub on the table next to the clip board, squatted down to peer into the gap where the tub had formally been. Steel rails; no mouse.
I pointed Gorman to the other end of the rack and called out, ‘Pull it forward a bit. Maybe he fell behind the rack.’
The entire cart was on industrial wheels, so after we unlocked the front pair, the rack glided forward like a boxy ballerina. I squeezed behind the caging and saw an errant pen lying on the floor, but no mouse. Picking up the pen and tossing it on the table, I waved for us to return the rack to its former position.
‘Hmm. That is weird. Maybe he died and someone failed to properly document it,’ I posited.
‘A mortality? On this study? And you think it wouldn’t have been reported?’ asked Gorman.
I stared at the caging, all ten rows were filled with black 6 mice, busily scratching away in their litter or gnawing at their food biscuits. Usually, each tub contained pair-housed mice, for social welfare reasons. But the respiratory virus we were studying had such a high mortality, that the surviving mice would sometimes eat the dead, earning the strain the nickname the Cannibal Cough. With the animals single-housed now, it was one tub-one mouse. All were present and accounted for, except 3124. Where did that little bastard go?
‘I’ll call up to the study director and see if the missing mouse is dead, but not removed from the dosing form,’ said Gorman, picking up the phone on the wall.
‘You know she won’t be able to hear you through the hood.’
Gorman sighed and sagged a little. He knew that being able to hold a conversation on the phone meant exiting the barrier, shedding all his protective equipment, sanitizing, and then exiting the second barrier to use the phone in the hallway. Neither of us wanted to go through gown-out, gown-in procedures.
‘Just send an email,’ I offered.
Gorman rolled his eyes. Sending an email would either get an immediate response or not be seen for an hour or more. It was a crap shoot. He reluctantly sat on the rolling stool in front of the computer terminal. After a few minutes of typing, he stood and said, ‘Let’s dose the other’s while we wait.’
We spent an hour picking up mice, tenting their scruff, injecting the vaccine, recording their apparent health, and returning them to their buckets. We flagged the cage card of anyone that didn’t look well. The sickly mice were mostly in the control group. That was good news for the vaccine manufacturer, bad for the mice with the virus. And bad for the people who currently had the virus. So far, it was predominantly affecting a small region in Western Michigan, but there were a lot of fears that it would spread. The vaccine had been fast tracked and this was a pivotal study towards its approval for clinical trials. Inexplicably losing a study animal, the missing 3124, would be heavily scrutinized. If we lost a mouse, how could regulators be sure we didn’t mess up anything else on the study? The study director was going to be really unhappy.
‘Did you check for a reply to your email,’ I asked Gorman, as I sprayed our pens and the serum bottles with antiseptic and place our paperwork in an autoclave bag. Everything on this side of the barrier had to be virus-free to pass through containment into the common area.
Gorman clicked the computer mouse a couple of times and read the study director’s reply out loud to me. ‘There are no undocumented mortalities on study. The mouse in question, Group 1, Animal 3124, should be accounted for and dosed according to schedule. If you cannot locate the mouse, you will need to complete a deviation report and notify the Health and Safety officer.’
We looked at each other for a second, then Gorman burst out, ‘Not it!’
I sighed. I already had a mountain of forms to complete. One more wouldn’t shift my universe significantly. Still, I wish I had begged off the extra work first.
After placing the bag filled with our dosing paperwork in the crate for the next autoclave cycle batch, we headed to the barrier to exit the containment area. After removing our protective outer gloves, shoe covers, and paper gowns, we crossed the second barrier and pulled off our respirator hoods and primary gloves. I stopped to retie my shoe as Gorman opened the last set of negative pressure doors. I glanced up and saw a black shape the size of a key lime clinging to hem of Gorman’s scrub shirt.
‘Oh, my God, Gorman. 3124!’ I barked in horror as he crossed the threshold and turned back to look at me.
‘Yeah, that was his number. I’m still not writing the report. It’s your turn,’ he replied.
‘No, Gorman, 3124! Look!’ I pointed as the crafty little rodent dropped down the leg of his scrubs, hit the floor, and scurried into the main corridor of our building. We both watched in stunned silence as the disease carrying, unvaccinated, Houdini mouse turned the corner and disappeared from sight.
