Then, when it was time for its release, I lifted the bark and found the mouse sleeping so soundly that it wouldn't respond to touch. For several days, the mouse hid beneath a slab of bark until night, when it emerged to eat seeds, berries and peanuts and drink from its water dish. I set up a terrarium for the mouse, took some photos, and intended to release it the following week. It was in October, and I decided to bring it home to photograph. The woodland species prefers cool, moist hemlock-hardwood forests near streams, especially those with plenty of fallen logs and rocks for cover.īoth jumping mice are mostly nocturnal and predominantly northern mammals, ranging from Canada, New England and the Great Lakes, down to the Appalachians.Ībout 15 years ago, I uncovered a woodland jumping mouse beneath a decaying log in a Pocono hemlock ravine, and I managed to capture it in a butterfly net. I've also seen them jumping 6 to 7 feet across dirt roads at night past the beams of my car's headlights.Ī very similar species - the meadow jumping mouse - is also found in our area, but I've seen that species only three or four times in lush, grassy clearings bordering rivers and lakes. I've come across such families a few previous times, as well as individual jumping mice hopping away from me in forests.
This group of woodland jumping mice must have consisted of a mother and her five recently fully-grown young. After just a minute or two of showing the mouse to the group of hikers, I released it and we watched it spring away into the woods.
Even more remarkable were the mouse's gigantic hind feet, which resembled those of a kangaroo and were longer than the entire legs of some other similar-sized mice.
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