Till-: WIIITK-FOOTEn OK DKKi: MOII.SI-:, 



501 



a hollow tree wliicli \\;is soiiKitimes inhabited l)y these animals. I 

 pieked it up and it made no attempt either to escape or to bite, but 

 cowered in my hand. It was evidently ill, and I put it in a cage, 

 where it died williin nii liour. Dissection showed that it was an 

 old male with worn teeth and that its stomach was gorged with food 

 and congested with blood. There was no apparent source of poi- 

 soning, and I judge that the animal was attacked by some intes- 

 tinal disease which acted rapidly and caused death, as it sometimes 

 does in human beings. Epidemics are known to spread among vari- 

 ous animals, but there was no evidence of an epidemic among the 

 mice about here where I caught a number during the same month, 

 and the cause of the death was apparently an individual malady. 



The habits of these mice are affected in some parts of northern 

 Indiana by the extensive swamps w^hich cover a part of the region. 

 Artificial drainage is rapidly altering conditions, but parts of the 

 Kankakee valley w^ere formerly overflowed to the width of from one 

 to three miles during the spring floods. The white-footed mice in- 

 habit these flooded forests and take refuge in the trees during high 

 water. Their food supply is probably derived from stores which the 

 squirrels have laid up in the hollow trees, with the addition of seeds 

 which find lodgment among the branches, and is perhaps helped out 

 also by tender twigs, buds and bark. 



When high water continues for several weeks the supply of food 

 must be very limited indeed, since the animals are restricted to 

 a single tree or to several whose branches touch, because they can 

 not leap from limb to limb like the squirrels. A hunter once told 

 me that while he was eating his lunch, sitting on the trunk of a 

 fallen tree surrounded on either side by a mile or more of water, a 

 mouse came down a tree against which the fallen top rested, and 

 after a number of panicky retreats, at last ventured to come up 

 and nibble at some bread crumbs near the lunch box, which sat on 

 the forks of the tree close to the hunter's legs. The animal was so 

 nearly starved that its customary timidity w^as forgotten, and it no 

 doubt considered the ample lunch which the hunter left for it as 

 a fair reward for its boldness. Doubtless many mice die of starva- 

 tion at such times, and some are probably drowned by the floods. 



Economic stains. — The white-footed mouse can not be consid- 

 ered beneficial from any standpoint, although it does eat a few in- 

 sects. When it gets into fields of corn or small grain its destruc- 

 tiveness is equalled only by that of the house mouse and rat. 



The most effective way of combating these mice is to keep fields 

 and fencerows clean and free from brush and rock-heaps. They 



