Wild Animals of North America / Intimate Studies of Big and Little Creatures of the Mammal Kingdom

by Edward William Nelson

The genus Phenacomys, to which the rufous tree mouse belongs, includes a number of species closely similar in size and external appearance to some of the well-known field mice. The structure of their teeth, however, shows that they form a distinct group of animals.

So far as known, the living members of the genus are confined to the Boreal parts of North America, where they range from the Atlantic to the Pacific in Canada, and southward along the mountains to New Hampshire, New Mexico, and northern California. The discovery of fossil representatives of the genus in Hungary and England indicates that it was formerly circumpolar in distribution.

All but one species of the genus live on the ground, inhabit burrows, make runways through the small vegetation, and feed on grasses and other herbage—all in close conformity with the habits of the meadow mice.

The tree mouse, however, is a strongly aberrant member of the group. It differs from all the others, and from all field mice, not only in its rufous color and longer tail, but in its remarkable mode of life. It is restricted to the humid region of magnificent forests in western Oregon and northwestern California, where it often spends its life in the tops of such noble trees as the Sitka spruce, the Douglas fir, and the coast redwood. Such an amazing departure from the habits of its kind lends unusual interest to this little animal.

Its nests are generally located high up in the trees, sometimes 100 feet from the ground, in forests where the branches of neighboring trees interlace so that it can pass from one to another and inhabit a world of its own, free from the ordinary four-footed enemies which prowl below.

The nests vary in size, structure, and location. In Oregon they have been found only in large trees at elevations varying from 30 to 100 feet. On the seashore near Eureka, California, they are placed on the branches of small second-growth myrtle and redwood trees. Farther inland in the same region many are in small trees, within a few yards of the ground, on the border of heavy redwood forests.

The higher nests of the tree mice are often the deserted and remodeled homes of the big gray tree squirrel of that region (Sciurus griseus) and contain a foundation of coarser sticks than in the nests wholly built by the mice. The larger proportion of the nests are built by the mice and are usually composed of small twigs, fragments of a netlike lichen, skeletons of fir, spruce, or other coniferous leaves, and the droppings of the mice themselves. They vary from small oval structures a few inches in diameter, located well out on the branches, to great masses close against and sometimes entirely surrounding the tree trunks, supported on several branches, and measuring three feet long and two or three feet high.

The interior of these large structures is pierced with numerous passageways and sometimes as many as five separate nest chambers are scattered through one. Tunnels run out along each of the limbs on which the mass rests, and if it extends all the way round one main tunnel encircles the trunk from which these hallways branch.

Such great nests have evidently been used for a long period and have grown with the steady accumulation of material. This has gradually decayed and become a solid mass of earthy humus. The large nests are usually the abodes of a single female, the homes of the males having been found to be small and more often located away from the trunk of the tree. The food of the red tree mouse, so far as known, consists entirely of the fleshy parts of fir and spruce needles and the bark from coniferous twigs.

Tree mice appear to breed throughout most of the year and have from one to four young in a litter. They are mainly nocturnal, and when driven from their nests by day appear rather slow and uncertain in their movements. Those living in highly placed nests usually escape by running out on the limbs, and pass from one tree to another if necessary. Those in small trees usually drop quickly from limb to limb until they reach the ground, when they run to the nearest shelter.