…and the harvest mouse housing shortage.
Every year Wimbledon gets through 50,000 to 55,000 tennis balls.
Some are sold to fans as souvenirs.
But many many more go to creating neat little waterproof homes for harvest mice whose habitat is under threat.
Up to 10 young mice can live in one ball.
Hey … you’re living dangerously! Little mice are cute! 
I’ve tried to educate her by keeping her food bowl full of delicious fishy chunks but she just ignores me and next morning another dead critter arrives on my doorstep. Her deliveries are more regular than Amazon.
What about rats? Now they are another thing altogether. She skilled at catching them?
We’ve had shrews, mice and small birds thus far Morty, even though she has a bell on her collar…With the amount of cats I’ve seen in the street I think she is the latest love interest, even though she is just over a year old. Those feelings will wear off as she ages…I know from experience…
…oh Foxy never change …you still know how to make a girl laugh.
Many years (decades) ago my father ran a local shop in a small town on the north east coast. This shop was a mix of toys, games and sports stuff. Every summer he would get a delivery of a couple of sacks of nearly new tennis balls - big sacks, each holding about a hundred balls. These apparently were used balls from Wimbledon or Queens. They sold well as they were half the price of brand new balls bought in those tubes of three or four.
It’s a great idea … better than wasting them and you can imagine young kids hoping to become players just loving balls used by their heroes and heroines.
True but on reflection I’ve a sneaking suspicion that it was all a story cobbled up by my father in order to increase the sales of what likely were factory rejects…
Those were the days … I call it entrepeneurial business flair.
People were just happy to feel they’d got a bargain then,
Learn from the master, Rodney
