deer mouse

noun

: any of various mice (genus Peromyscus) of North and Central America

especially : one (P. maniculatus) widely distributed in forests and grasslands of North America

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web

Additional cases were soon reported, and the deer mouse was identified as the primary host. —Alberto Lucas LÓpez, National Geographic, 17 June 2021

In this view, distinguishing one Omicron sublineage from another is less like distinguishing a wolf from a cow and more like distinguishing a white-footed mouse from a deer mouse: important to a rodentologist but not really to anyone else. —Jacob Stern, The Atlantic, 9 Jan. 2023

The deer mouse makes a simple burrow, just a short tunnel that leads to a nest. —Breanna Draxler, Discover Magazine, 18 Jan. 2013

The wide-ranging white-footed mouse, well known among New Yorkers, and very closely related to the deer mouse, was predicted to be susceptible by a computer model that Barbara Han and her colleagues built. —Carolyn Kormann, The New Yorker, 10 Feb. 2022

The itsy-bitsy deer mouse leaves bounding footprints, often with a thin groove left by a slender tail. —Jen Rose Smith, CNN, 19 Nov. 2020

Each specimen—say, a species of pitcher plant from Florida or a deer mouse from arid New Mexico—is catalogued with a scientific name, a collection date and the place where it was collected, and often with other relevant information. —Smithsonian Magazine, 26 June 2020

The virus, carried by deer mice, left 13 dead including young, otherwise healthy people who developed sudden respiratory failure. —Simon Romero, New York Times, 9 Apr. 2020

In 2012, a booming population of deer mice in the park caused a rare hantavirus outbreak, which killed three people and sickened another seven. —Washington Post, 17 Jan. 2020

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Word History

Etymology

from its agility

First Known Use

1833, in the meaning defined above

Kids Definition

deer mouse

noun

: any of numerous North American mice of fields and woodlands