Nebraska is near the heart of the hispid pocket mouse’s range, yet the state has only 4 records since 2000: two from Scotts Bluff County in the Panhandle and one each from Garden and Phelps counties. NatureServe ranks the species secure in the state, a stark contrast with its imperiled standing at the range edges farther south and east.
Four records can’t trace a range. Much of western and central Nebraska, including the Sandhills, a sea of grass-stabilized dunes, offers the loose, sandy soil this mouse digs into, and a pocket mouse usually turns up only when someone runs a trap line.
The 4 reports fall in June, July, and September, too few to show a season. Pocket mice don’t hibernate outright, but they go torpid and stay underground through cold snaps. One caution for the recent picture: the newest record dates to 2018, so the current decade is largely unwritten.
Full species profile
