Pennsylvania Game News - September 2014 - 52

keep traps laced with peanut butter,
especially in early autumn when they
are seeking warm winter homes. Livetrapping and moving them are not
an option, even if we wanted to. The
late, great mammalogist William J.
Hamilton Jr. once live-trapped and
marked white-footed mice and released
them a mile away from their home
territory. A few days later they were
back, exhibiting an amazing homing
ability. In addition, they so well know
their home ranges of about one-fifth
acre that they can quickly find hiding
places whenever they are needed.
But as Hamilton once wrote about
the white-footed mouse, "It often
takes up residence in houses; the first
evidence of its presence may be a boot
half-filled with cherry pits or hickory
nuts."
In our house, I find sunflower seed
stashes not only in old boots, but
stuffed under the cushions of our sofas
and chairs. And occasionally, I've
uncovered shredded sweaters or shirts
balled up into nests on some forgotten
closet shelf or in an old bureau drawer.
However, most white-footed mice
find homes outdoors in abandoned
squirrel, woodchuck or bird nests, or
in bird nest boxes, tree cavities, half-

rotten stumps, rock piles or even in a
ball of leaves underground. Recently,
researchers have noted that the mice
especially like the humid conditions
under the rapidly expanding invasive
shrub Japanese barberry, which is also
favored by black-legged ticks, still
another connection with Lyme disease
and white-footed mice.
White-footed mice use their long
tails as props and balancing organs,
to climb trees, although they are
not as adept as the longer-tailed
congener's deer mice. White-footed
mice (Peromyscus leucopus) and
woodland deer mice (P. maniculatus)
look alike, and often live in the same
habitat in our Appalachian forests.
The length of their tails can sometimes
be their distinguishing characteristic,
because the tails of white-footed
mice are slightly less than half the
total length of their bodies while the
eastern woodland deer mice have tails
more than half their total length. But
the best way to tell them apart is by
comparing their skulls. Because I'm not
inclined to measure their tails or study
their skulls, perhaps some of the mice in
our home are deer mice, because they,
too, can create havoc inside homes and
camps and are carriers of hantavirus,

Cover Painting By Ken Hunter
The interesting birds depicted on this month's cover at
one time nested in crevices on the face of cliffs, but now
purple martins pretty much have abandoned natural sites
for man-made structures affectionately known as "martin
condos." The condo must be placed high on a pole and
should be located near water. It's fun to watch the agile
maneuvers of purple martins as they glean insects - pesky
mosquitoes are vulnerable - from the air.

52

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Pennsylvania Game News - September 2014

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