This rat is common in the Joshua tree and juniper belts, and locally penetrates the pinyon belt at about 5000 feet elevation.
On that slope anything that started rolling never stopped unless it went against one of the rare pine or pinyon trees.
Chewed cones of pinyon pine and chewed juniper seeds were on the ground.
It was a dry region, but with plenty of grama-grass, and much of it covered with an open forest of pinyon and cedar.
Another species of the same genus, the pinyon mouse, P. truei, also lives on the Mesa Verde.
