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Show Maybe the Profs Saw Super Mouse Zoologists Discover High-Jumping Rodent CARBONDALE, 111. Here's a fact that should encourage mice-fearig mice-fearig women to scale new heights: Southern Illinois has mice that can jump six feet high. Not that they'd want to jump on a frightened lady's chair. The meadow mea-dow jumping mice referred to probably prob-ably are even more timid than their cousins in the pantry. In fact, they're so skeptical about people that only four known speciments have been taken in southern Illinois Illi-nois in 11 years. This small, bouncy creature Is not too uncommon north of the Mason-Dixon line but, until 1940, no jumping mice had been collected in Little Egypt. A family of them apparently jumped up for a weekend week-end and decided to colonize the area. Julius R. Swayne, a faculty assistant as-sistant In zoology at Southern Illinois Illi-nois university who trapped a pair on a farm near Pyatt three years ago, estimated that there were about four per acre in that vicinity. Another such mouse was found at a university farm here and still another is in the Museum of Natural Nat-ural and Social Sciences at SIU. The meadow jumping mouse, called Zapus Hudsonius for short, is about the size of an ordinary field mouse, but his tail sometimes measures nearly five inches and his real legs are about one and one-half one-half inches long. He looks something some-thing like a kangaroo that didn't quite make the grade. The mouse can broad jump 10 feet or more using his hind legs and tail as a springboard. His movements are so quick that he barely touches the ground after a leap and he's sailing through space aealn. |