DC reports cluster around Rock Creek Park, Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, and the Anacostia River, but a house mouse doesn’t really need parkland to get by. It’s an indoor animal that follows food and shelter, so most of the city’s actual mice likely live in buildings, warehouses, and rowhouse walls that never get formally surveyed.
This species didn’t spread through DC’s woods and wetlands the way a native rodent would. It’s originally from Central Asia and rode along with agriculture and shipping, and it still favors a dry wall cavity or a grain store over open ground. Its coat is gray-brown with a long, thin, sparsely furred tail, and it eats almost anything it finds.
Records here appear across most months with no sharp seasonal dip, since a mouse that gets indoors can keep breeding through a DC winter that would slow down an outdoor rodent. The count reflects where people looked and reported sightings, not a true population estimate.
Full species profile
