Game, Set, Mouse | Meet the beneficiaries of Wimbledon’s recycled tennis balls

Harvest mice are the smallest mammals in Britain. They are only about the size of your thumb, and live in tall grass across the countryside, usually in small nests. But with their habitat infringed upon, animal conservationists found an object that makes for a perfect harvest mouse home: the tennis ball.

Every year, Wimbledon uses over 50,000 tennis balls over the course of the competition. Some of them are reusable on tennis courts, although maybe not in tournament play, but the vast majority need recycling. This is where the unlikely help of the harvest mouse comes in.

The tiny, brown mice have numerous predators in the wild. Tall grass provides them some protection, but not as much as custom-built homes that shelter them from predators and elements alike. 

As well as looking incredibly cute, poking their little heads out of the tennis ball, it’s a surprisingly perfect fit. They don’t need a large hole to come and go, and if they are building nests to care for their young, they can leave their offspring in comparative safety – as many as ten young harvest mice can live in a single tennis ball.  

Though natural elements make life hard for the harvest mouse, more industrial farming methods have also compromised some of their habitat. This is what inspired the tennis ball initiative. 

The balls are attached to poles between 75 centimeters and 1.5 meters off the ground. The mice can then make their nests in relative safety from birds of prey and weasels, which are too big to get through the hole.

Read More: The kangaroo that lives up in the trees

The initiative with Wimbledon, and specifically the All England Lawn Tennis Club, began in the early 2000s. In partnership with the Wildlife Trust in Avon, Glamorgan and Northumberland, the tennis balls were recycled as homes, and placed on poles between  75 centimeters and 1.5 meters above the ground. 

Wimbledon might be Britain’s most famous and prestigious tennis club, but after they began donating balls, other clubs across the country have begun to follow suit. In the wake of floods in Leicestershire in 2013 that washed out many of the mice and their nests, hundreds of balls were donated by a local club.

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