RATS AND MICE FAMILY 



249 



by traps, guns, or poison, they prove one of the 

 most difficult enemies with which the farmer 

 has to contend. The work of a few animals is 

 insignificant, but the work of millions makes 

 heavy inroads on growing crops. In shocks of 

 corn and wheat left for a long time the grain 

 is often completely devoured. Even stacks of 

 hay are often found in spring with the lower 

 parts cut to chaff and filled with the nests of 

 meadow mice." \\'hen the snow melts in the 

 spring, trees and shrubs are found stripped of 

 their bark for a wide space near 'the ground, 

 and the marks of tiny teeth remaining in the 

 hard wood show what animal has been at work. 

 Sometimes apple trees ten to twelve inches 

 in diameter are completely girdled. 



Various protective measures have been 

 adopted and suggested. Wire netting and tin 

 cylinders placed around the bases of the trees 

 are expensive, but they seem to give the best re- 

 sults. But obviously the greatest destruction of 

 these pests should be wrought by their natural 

 enemies, the hawks, owls, weasels, foxes, coyotes 

 and minks, and if these become few, then the 

 protection of other such enemies becomes doubly 

 important, if we are to escape such devastating 

 hordes of Voles as have swept over Europe. 



Owing to their peculiar habits Pine Mice are 

 not so well known as are Meadow Mice. Their 

 natural habitat is the forest, although they are 

 by no means restricted to pine woods or forested 

 areas. While often inhabiting pine woods and 

 the edges of adjacent fields, they live also in 

 forests and copses of deciduous trees, usually on 

 uplands. 



The life of the Pine Mouse is largely spent in 

 underground tunnels, which so closely resemble 

 those of the Mole that generally they are mis- 

 taken for the work of that animal. The ridges 

 of loose soil over the tunnel are exactly like 

 those thrown up by the Mole, but the inner di- 

 ameter of Mouse tunnels is less. Some of these 

 burrows are utilized as nesting places. Nests 

 are built also at the surface of the ground, under 

 fallen logs, brush heaps, flat stones, fences, or 

 other shelter. The number of young at birth 

 evidently averages less than is usual in this 

 family. 



From their homes in woods and thickets Pine 

 Mice invade fields, orchards, nurseries, door- 

 yards, and gardens, passing always through 

 underground runways. Living in concealment, 

 neither their presence nor the injury they inflict 

 is suspected until the latter is past remedy. 



Bulbs, planted hopefully in autumn, appear not 

 at all in the spring, or only in the shape of sickly 

 plants, whose life substance has been gnawed 

 away. Nursery and orchard trees here and 

 there put forth no leaves, and an examination 

 of the roots discloses the nature of the damage. 



Commenting further on their depredations, 

 David E. Lantz. says : " Potatoes, sweet pota- 

 toes, carrots, beets and other vegetables are 

 eaten by Pine Mice, both while growing and 

 when stored in pits or lying in piles in the field 

 or garden. Potatoes partly matured or left long 

 in the ground after maturity are eaten, and the 

 injury is attributed to Moles, because tunnels 

 supposed to be the work of Moles lead to the 

 place of damage. I have investigated numerous 

 cases of such injury and have invariably found 

 either that the tunnels were made by Pine Mice, 

 or, if Mole tunnels, that they were frequented 

 by Mice. Traps set in the tunnels at the potato 

 hills captured Pine Mice, and the starchy ma- 

 terial found in the stomachs of those caught 

 proved that they, and not Moles, had been eating 

 the potatoes." 



The Oregon Vole is a rather small-sized 

 Mouse of the Pacific Coast region ranging from 

 Northern California to Puget Sovmd. It is 

 found on dry. open ground, under cover of grass 

 and low vegetation, and under logs in the open 

 redwood forest of California. 



The Long-tailed Vole is an inhabitant of the 

 Yukon region found in various environments. 

 Mr. Wilfred H. Osgood records that " at Glacier 

 and Bennett they were secured on dry. rocky 

 hillsides ; at Lake Lebarge. they were taken in 

 the kitchen of a log cabin : at Rink Rapids in an 

 open, sandy place : and near Charlie Village on 

 the side of a cut bank, where they had made 

 burrows and runways among the exposed roots 

 of trees." 



Drunimond's Vole is a species occurring from 

 Hudson Bay to the west slope of the Rocky 

 Mountains and Alaska. Mr. Edward A. Preble 

 found it abundant in many parts of the Atha- 

 baska-Mackenzie region, where it did consider- 

 able damage about the trading por-ts. entering 

 the houses freely. Another interesting species 

 of this region is the Yellow-cheeked Vole, a 

 large Mouse whose burrows were evidently quite 

 deep, there being nearly a bushel of dirt at the 

 entrance to a single burrow. Preble captured a 

 female which would have borne eleven voung 

 ones. This species is quite active during the 

 dav. 



