The mouse with wine-bottle lead foil in the top may have
been my fault. I did that to two of them--at home and in
my office--because I found a little more pressure made
the ball track better.
I've never been an alcohol-consumer; the lead came from
a friend, who used to save it (back in the 1980s) to
mail to Republicans. Apparently he had, many years
before, registered to vote in a Republican primary solely
to oppose a particularly-poor candidate. That somehow
got him on a GOP mailing list that sent him endless
funding appeals with post-paid envelopes. He used to
fill the envelopes with lead and drop them in the mail,
in the hope that he would cost the party even more in
excess postage than they were already spending to send
the funding pitches.
By the time I was at Bell Labs, he had moved to Canada,
and was no longer receiving unwanted political funding
pitches, but he was glad to save a few bits of lead for
me when I thought of the trick and asked him. Only too
glad, it turned out; he kept saving it and saving it
and saving it even though I neither needed nor wanted
any more. Eventually I managed to get the message
through to him.
He has since moved back to the US. He is still fond of
wine. I don't know what he does with the cork wrappers.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON