The Cotton Mouse (Peromyscus gossypinus) is a species of rodent in the family Cricetidae. It is found in the woodlands of the south-eastern states of the United States. Adults are about 7-8 inches, and have an appearance very similar to the white footed mouse. The cotton mouse is larger in size and has a longer skull and hind-feet. They have a dark brown body and white feet and belly. The name comes from the fact they often use cotton for nest construction, discovered by Le Conte.
Cotton mice are omnivorous, and eat seeds and insects. Breeding may occur throughout the year, and usually occurs in early spring and fall. They may have four litters a year of up to seven young, which are helpless and naked at birth. Cotton mice are weaned from their mother at 20–25 days, and become sexually mature around two months. Average life span is four to five months, with a rare few living to one year. They are preyed upon by owls, snakes, weasels, and bobcats.
One subspecies, the Chadwick Beach Cotton Mouse (Peromyscus gossypinus restrictus) was last seen in 1938 and is now presumed extinct.
Famous quotes containing the words cotton and/or mouse:
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“A mouse does not run into the mouth of a sleeping cat.”
—Estonian. Trans. by Ilse Lehiste (1993)