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Red Mouse
Images coming soon.
Length.—7.40 inches.
Description.—Differs from all the other long-tailed mice in its bright fulvous colour above and strong fulvous suffusion below and the absence of a sharp line of separation between the colours of the upper and lower surface. No dusky patch at the base of the whiskers, and young fulvous, like the adults, not gray, as in the white-footed mice. Ears rather short.
Range.—Low grounds of south Atlantic States, southern Virginia to Enterprise, Florida.
Length.—6.70 inches.
Description.—General colour gray, slightly tinted with yellowish brown, especially on the face and shoulders, dusky on the back; below paler gray, sometimes suffused with buff.
Range.—Cosmopolitan. Introduced into America from the Old World.
Although related to the white-footed mice, the red mouse is very distinct in many respects, especially in its shorter ears and different coloration. It is not a common species.
INTRODUCED RATS AND MICE
(Sub-Family Marinae)
House Mouse
Mus musculus Linnaeus
I have in another place alluded to the house mouse as a foreigner; but, as a matter of fact, it is not more of a foreigner than are the descendants of the very first settlers in this country, English or Dutch. Its ancestors came across with the earliest of them, and while the white people were still but campers and squatters on the borders of a bewildering forest of unknown extent the youngest of these little hangers-on could already count grand-parents and great grand-parents of American birth, so that reckoning by generations there were even then American mice.
Still, it would hardly be safe to conclude that all or even any considerable portion of the mice that inhabit our dwellings at present are descended from these first-comers.
Immigration and emigration have proved as popular among them as with members of the human race, and every ship that crosses the Atlantic bears, among other things, its humble cargo of mice from one shore to the other, so that some of those which even now are nibbling at our pastry or the bindings of books may very possibly have spent the first part of the season in England or on the Continent, and just as possibly will be there again next year.
Mice were originally natives of Southern Asia. From there they have accompanied man in his wanderings to all parts to the world, travelling, as he has travelled, in ox-teams and on the backs of donkeys, by steamship and railway; taking up their quarters wherever he does, first in log cabins with thatched roofs, and finally, in some instances, on the nineteenth floor of a steel building where generation after generation may live and die in turn without having so much as touched foot to the earth.
Strangely enough the race seems to be proof against the changes wrought upon most animals by difference of environment. Specimens from the opposite sides of the globe, or from widely separated latitudes, are said to be practical indistinguishable, as if at last the species has hit upon a style of form and colouring, perfectly suited to all conditions of life.
That peculiar tint popularly known as mouse colour seldom attracts attention to the wearer, and the almost hairless tail, while undoubtedly a most useful member, is not likely to become bedraggled or in the way in places where the sort of tail carried by the average little beast would prove a nuisance or a positive danger to its owner. A mouse's tail, although it looks naked, will be found on closer inspection to be covered with short hairs, just long enough to turn aside the moisture instead of retaining it.
Try to imagine what the tail of a squirrel or weasel would look like after having been dragged across cream and butter and the various other substances with which the average house mouse endeavours to surround itself; its owner would quickly be reduced to amputating the bothersome member in sheer desperation. Mice it is believed even use their tails for skimming the cream from pans of milk, when they are unable to reach it in any other way.
Neither is the tail of a mouse much source of danger to the little beast as might be supposed. It certainly has the appearance of a most convenient handle for cats or other enemies to seize upon, but the skin which covers it, like that of a squirrel is but loosely attached, and slips off readily enough to permit the escape of many a desperate mouse. It is not at all uncommon to find mice that have lost the skin from their tails in this manner. The process must necessarily be a decidedly painful one, but the wound heals in course of time and the mouse is still possessed of a tail, even if it is bereft of most of its former suppleness. One would suppose that a tail which could easily be broken clear off like those of some reptiles would be an improvement.