glad i'm not a mouse

Sometimes, despite the complications that come with relationships, I have to give thanks for things being the way they are. I mean, I could be a broad-footed marsupial mouse:

This species enjoys an annual bacchanalia. Each year, all the females come into heat simultaneously. The next three weeks are a sexual frenzy. Day and night, males rush around, fighting each other and seducing as many females as they can. It's hard work: just five days after the close of the mating season, all the males are dead, their bodies emaciated and their fur falling out; autopsies show their guts ravaged with ulcers.

(That's from Olivia Judson in the April/May 2006 issue of Seed Magazine.)