The Deer Mouse - Furry, Friendly and Fertile

Al Lowe
Contributor

This is the wild mouse of North America. It is present in almost all of the continent, except Alaska and Newfoundland. It is quite a presentable little mouse - nothing like your ordinary house mouse. It takes an expert to tell it from its cousin, the White-footed Mouse. Since the latter do not breed here, we have no problem with that. Both, incidentally, are mostly brownish-grey with white underparts, legs and feet.
Deer mice are usually active at night, and they stay active all winter long. They store seeds in large quantities for the winter, usually near their nests. For some reason, they keep the seeds of each species quite carefully separated from each other. They also tend to hang around home, total range being about 1 1/2 to 2 acres. The habit of territoriality, so common in many wild things, is very weak in this small animal.
The Deer Mouse is a vital link in the food chain. For its part, it is mainly a seed-eater, but it also likes cherries, wild apples, cranberries, and the like. It also goes after buds in the spring, and insects, eggs and larvae as it finds them. On the other hand, this little mouse is eaten by a whole host of other living things - snakes, squirrel’s, weasels, mink, foxes, coyotes, and on and on. It makes up the main staple of the diet of owls in the winter because of two bad habits. It is active at night, and it travels on top of the snow, instead of underneath like many of its near relatives.
Deer mice are very destructive of the seeds of evergreens, which make up a large part of the diet of the forest dwellers. This can pose quite a big problem in some areas when it comes to re-seeding logged over areas of the forest. On the positive side, these little fellows are relatively unafraid of man, and can be easily tamed. Thus, they have come to play quite an important part in the field of medical research.
Let’s look at the reproductive potential of these mice. An adult female in the wild will probably have four litters a year. Each litter contains from one to nine young. The young mature and are capable of breeding at about 40 days. This means that, in theory, a single pair could produce nearly 10,000 new individuals in one year. Of course, this can’t happen but it does indicate how many of these mice are available as food for other living things in the environment.
This little mouse will happily enter your cabin. He will eat anything around that is available, and he will chew up mattresses and cloth of all kinds to make nice soft nests. They are also quite happy to live with each other so you may have a whole colony of them by spring. It is the only native mouse that will regularly enter homes, barns and cabins. It can be very destructive, indeed.
The Deer Mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus, is an important part of nature’s food cycle. As long as he stays in the outdoors, we can be glad that he is with us.