General: Long-tailed Pocket Mice (Chaetodipus formosus) are small, buffy-gray mice with small ears; a long, tufted tail; and no other marks. The head and body are about 3-inches long, and the tail is 4-5 inches long. They have external, fur-lined cheek pouches; run on all four feet; and have a crest of long hairs on the top of the tail.

Like kangaroo rats, pocket mice have external, fur-lined cheek pouches that they use to carry seeds and other food items to and from their burrows and seed caches. Most animals carry food in their mouth (e.g., dogs and cats) or inside the cheeks (chipmunks), but pocket mice actually have an extra pouch on the outside of their cheeks, similar to the pouch of an Australian kangaroo.

Habitat: Pocket Mice are common to abundant in the deserts and lower mountains around Las Vegas in the Lower Sonoran (Creosote-Bursage Flats) and Upper Sonoran (Pinyon-Juniper Woodland) life zones. You won't see them because they are nocturnal, but their burrows give away their presence, and you might see them darting across desert roads at night.

Comments: The entrance to pocket mouse burrows usually goes straight down with no evidence of a dirt mound. Pocket mice often move into the burrows of other animals (e.g., pocket gopher, kangaroo rat), and dig escape holes by burrowing upward from inside an existing tunnel.