Nebraska contributes 142 records to the white-footed mouse’s national tally of more than 45,000, most of them logged in the state’s timbered river corridors rather than its open grassland.
Known by its white feet and brown back, found where the trees are
A warm brown back, a white belly, and white feet set this mouse apart from the grayer house mouse it sometimes shares a building with, and in Nebraska it sticks close to wooded cover: the timbered bluffs of Indian Cave State Park and Ponca State Park along the Missouri River, and the tree-lined corridor the Platte River carves through the middle of the state. Eastern Nebraska’s tallgrass prairie and loess hills hold enough of that scattered woodland and brush to support it; the open Sandhills and High Plains farther west generally don’t.
A climber that rarely has to run across open ground
Rather than dash across exposed ground when threatened, this mouse scrambles up shrubs, vines, and low tree trunks, sometimes ducking into an old bird nest or hollow limb to disappear from a predator. That habit, paired with a steady practice of caching seeds and acorns, lets it ride out the harshest stretch of a Nebraska winter without venturing far from cover. Beyond its own natural history, this species carries real ecological weight as the main early host for the bacteria that cause Lyme disease, picked up by blacklegged ticks that feed on it as larvae.
Status in Nebraska
The white-footed mouse is native to Nebraska, and NatureServe ranks it S5, secure, in the state.
Full species profile
