Baby Salt Marsh Harvest Mice
Most people have never seen a Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse, let alone a baby one!
These tiny and charismatic rodents are endemic to the marshes surrounding the San Francisco Bay. This means they can only be found here! They can also drink salt water and eat incredibly salty pickleweed, among other adaptations to their marshy environment.
These tiny mice are truly unique animals, and they are also critically endangered due to loss of habitat, invasive species, and climate change. The population of these mice continues to shrink, and science on them is limited due to their small numbers and secretive, nocturnal lifestyle.
So, WildCare's team was astonished to admit these three TINY baby Salt Marsh Harvest Mice!
How did we know they were Salt Marsh Harvest Mice? Their location on a bayside walking trail in Tiburon, California, gave us our first clue.
The tiny babies were strewn across the trail squeaking frantically. Our guess is that the mother mouse's nest was attacked by a predator, and the baby mice were thrown aside during the attack.
The rescuer of these babies picked them up and rushed them to WildCare, where Director of Animal Care Melanie Piazza made the definitive identification based on the odd, vibrating squeak the stressed and frightened baby mice made.
You can hear that call in the video below:
What's involved in the care of these endangered wildlife patients?
They require a tremendous amount of very specialized care, but fortunately, WildCare's rodent specialist is up for the challenge!
In this photo you can see how extremely small these baby mice are. Until they weaned, she was feeding them drops of special rodent formula every three hours!
The video at the top of the page gives an up-close look at one of the mice eating, but this photo (the baby mouse is circled in yellow) shows why a magnifying glass is a really beneficial tool when caring for tiny endangered mice.
As of this writing, all three mice have opened their eyes and have been successfully weaned off formula. The team was delighted when we added pickleweed to their enclosure and the baby mice immediately started nibbling on it.
The three babies have become glossy and self-sufficient, and we will be able to release them back to their salt marsh habitat soon.
We hope they will, in their tiny way, bolster the future for their species.
Watch the young mice explore their pickleweed in the video below! Note that the colors on their tails help us identify them. Those markings will have faded by the time they are released.
Help us care for endangered species and ALL of the wildlife patients at WildCare!