Mississippi’s occurrence databases hold 66 eastern mole records, and NatureServe ranks the species S5, secure, across the state. Reports come from Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge’s sandy coastal-plain soil, the sandy margins of north Mississippi’s flood-control lakes, and De Soto National Forest’s piney woods farther south, all places with the loose, well-drained dirt this burrower needs.
Dirt matters more than terrain
An eastern mole needs soil loose enough to shovel through with its broad, paddle-shaped front feet, and it avoids heavy clay, rocky ground, or anything waterlogged. That’s likely why Mississippi’s records favor the sandy soils of the coastal plain and the lake-margin ground around the state’s north Mississippi flood-control reservoirs, while the state’s heavy Delta clay and the chalky Black Belt Prairie soils of the northeast turn up far fewer reports. Soil texture, not climate or elevation, seems to be doing most of the work in where this mole turns up.
A tunnel system that never fully rests
Nearly blind, an eastern mole senses earthworms and grubs through its bald, sensitive snout rather than sight, and it stays active in short bursts around the clock instead of settling into one clean sleep-wake pattern. Mississippi’s records run fairly steady through the year with modest bumps in spring and fall, likely tied to when rain pushes earthworms and grubs closer to the surface and makes foraging easier.
Status in Mississippi
NatureServe ranks the eastern mole S5, secure, in Mississippi, and it’s native to the state. That fits an animal well-suited to the state’s sandy coastal-plain and hill-country soils, even if the Delta’s heavy clay and the Black Belt’s prairie ground offer it far less to work with.
Full species profile
