Mouse on grass stalk at Deramakot – any clues?

I recently finished a couple week trip to Sabah focused mainly on mammals – particularly orangutan, gibbon, other primates, wild cats and civet (but I am interested in all wild life).

On a night drive at deramakot, we came across a little mouse that was sleeping on the end of a tall grass stalk.   The stalk would probably be 1.5 meters tall if straight, but mouse was at the very end, so the stalk was bent over, but still probably a meter off the ground.  I thought that was odd, and snapped a not very good picture.

A couple minutes later we saw another one, and I got a better picture.   One mouse doing this is odd, but two is a pattern.  So I thought well, this must be some well known behavior that I’ll look up when I get home.    Except I can’t find any mention of it.   The mouse that is frequently seen on stalks is a harvest mouse on wheat or other grain, but obviously that is not what is going on in Sabah.

Unfortunately the mouse is curled up in a ball and facing away from the camera so it may not be very diagnostic.   It looks to me like a Ranee Mouse (aka Lesser Ranee Mouse, Haeromys margarettae), but I defer to those with greater expertise.

Does anybody know about this?   Either the identity of the mouse, or the behavior of sleeping on grass stalks.

Here is the picture.

Nathan

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Nathan Myhrvold

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