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Old 04-22-2005, 04:24 AM   #26 (permalink)
raveneye
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There are a couple families of native mice, and they're hard to tell apart without looking at their teeth with a magnifying glass . . . but without the teeth, the general rule is if the hair in front of the ear is long enough to cover a considerable part of the ear, it's a microtine, otherwise its a crecitine. "Vole" is just a synonym for several microtine mice. The crecitine family contains mice and rats, while the microtine family contains just mice (plus the muskrat).

By the look of the ear there and the hair covering part of it, I'd vote for a microtine, like a meadow mouse or meadow vole. There is a lot of size variation, these guys can get up to over 8 inches including the tail, which is about half the total length.

The size cutoff between mice and rats is about 10 inches including the tail.

Give the cat some salmon buffet!
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