A striped rodent

[Cimbian]

I hope someone can rest my curiosity regarding a rodent I spotted a couple of weeks ago.

I was moving some bags in my office (West Sussex) and I noticed a 'mouse' like animal in amongst the polystyrene chips in the bag.

When I took the bag outside and let the animal out is was 'mouse-sized', very dark brown but with distinctive darker stripes running along the length of each side (a bit like a chipmunk).

I have searched on the web and can't find anything like this anywhere.

does anyone have an idea as to what it may've been?

Steve.

[Gill Catton]

There's a little mouse that my lecturer used to keep called a african zebra mouse that had stripes along it's sides, if you do an google image search with 'zebra mouse' lots of pictures come up, see if it's right?
As far as I know there are no natve stripey rodents in the UK.

[Cimbian]

Thanks for the suggestion. I googled and found some images and whilst the zebra mouse is quite attractive it is not what I saw.

The one I saw was brown with just one main stripe on either side along its length and about 8mm thick and darker fur than the main body.

[henrya]

Two possibilities occur to me

1) Some escaped pet.

2) A native mouse or vole in mid-moult, where the new fur was coloured differently from the old fur. Not sure about mouse moult patterns - I'll try and find some info.

henrya

[Barbarian]

Strangely enough, the event that prompted me to search, find, and join this forum was the fact that whilst wandering in the bushes along the Thames in Oxfordshire, I saw an completely unusual brown rodent with two long black stripes running parallel down it's back and I was utterly nonplussed as to what it could have been.

If I didn't know much, much better I would have said chipmunk.

[~T~]

Originally Posted by Barbarian

Strangely enough, the event that prompted me to search, find, and join this forum was the fact that whilst wandering in the bushes along the Thames in Oxfordshire, I saw an completely unusual brown rodent with two long black stripes running parallel down it's back and I was utterly nonplussed as to what it could have been.

If I didn't know much, much better I would have said chipmunk.

It may well have been. They are all over the place in France apparently. Did you not read in all the papers a few years or so back about the mutant rabid chipmunks that were poised to invade Britain?

Fears that diseased French chipmunk plague will reach Britain | Mail Online

[Farplace]

Chipmunk, or possibly hamster?

[tcvarlh]

It's a Pied Humbug Murrymentha sucrosa related to the Hodgeheg



h

[STYRBJORN]

Russian hamster? All sorts of stripey patterns.

[vole-woman]

Russian dwarf hamsters sometimes have stripes down their sides, but they're very very small.

I remember the chipmunk scare - this is before the press moved their attention to monster-foxes. The reporting was eye-wateringly hilarious. And Jeremy Vine did a phone-in where a woman claimed she'd been sitting on a sofa in the back garden (who has a sofa in their back garden?) and a chipmunk had "gone for her" and she'd had to run inside and scream for help. My kids still laugh about it now.