The plains pocket mouse (Perognathus flavescens) is a heteromyid rodent of North America. It ranges from southwestern Minnesota and southeastern North Dakota to northern Texas east of the Rockies, and from northern Utah and Colorado to northern Chihuahua west of the Rockies.
It has soft silky fur and grows to be 5 inches long, although nearly half of that is the tail.
They often live directly underneath Spanish bayonet or prickly pear plants. They are accustomed to sandy soil and eat mostly seeds, large and small grasses and small leaves of plants. Some food found in their cheek pouches are: seeds of needle grass (Stipa), bind weed, sandbur grass, a small bean (probably Astragulus), and sedge (Cyperus). Even those caught in grain fields usually have their pouches filled with weed seeds. Seeds of two species of pigeon grass, a few other grasses, and wild buckwheat have been found in their burrows.
Their breeding season is mainly July to August and the females tend to have 4 embryos at a time. Other information about this animal is scarce.
Famous quotes containing the words plains, pocket and/or mouse:
“We hold on to hopes for next year every year in western Dakota: hoping that droughts will end; hoping that our crops won’t be hailed out in the few rainstorms that come; hoping that it won’t be too windy on the day we harvest, blowing away five bushels an acre; hoping ... that if we get a fair crop, we’ll be able to get a fair price for it. Sometimes survival is the only blessing that the terrifying angel of the Plains bestows.”
—Kathleen Norris (b. 1947)
“It is at a fair that man can be drunk forever on liquor, love, or fights; at a fair that your front pocket can be picked by a trotting horse looking for sugar, and your hind pocket by a thief looking for his fortune.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“A mouse does not run into the mouth of a sleeping cat.”
—Estonian. Trans. by Ilse Lehiste (1993)