Karen Wils photo A little vole pops up in his tunnel in the snow on a sunny January day.

ESCANABA — Squeak, squeak, squeak — mouse, vole and shrew all hidden snug and warm beneath a quilt of white snow.

These tiny true Yoopers don’t sleep away the winter like the bear and the chipmunk do.

Four feet of snow and ten-below and still these little critters thrive.

Folks love to feed the birds and watch the deer in the wintertime. The mouse, vole and shrew are not as popular or as visible, tucked away in their snowy tunnels, but they’re so important in the North Woods cycle of life.

Many times, while out on snowshoes or cross-country skis a person will come upon little meandering burrows in the wind-swept snow. Tiny paw prints from a small round hole in the snow to the base of an old rotten tree stump are evidence of the wildlife below the crust of the snow.

Every once in a while you may catch a glimpse of a grayish creature squiggling on top of the snow only to quickly disappear back down into the depths of the snow cover.

Squeak, squeak, squeak, was it a mouse or a vole (not to be confused with a mole) or a shrew?

Upper Michigan is home to all three. Some people say “eeek” when they hear a squeak; they do not like the wee beasts. Like them or not these small animals are very important to the well-being of the forest. The keyword here is healthy balance. Mice, voles and shrews make up the bottom of the food chain. Owls, hawks, foxes, coyote, bobcat, lynx, weasels, snakes and even wolves rely on these tiny animals for survival.

The members of this tiny trio, the white-footed mouse, the vole and the short tailed shrew prefer to live in the woodlands although they can invade barns, outhouses, sheds and homes. They are not the same as the very destructive non-native species, the house mouse.

All three of these mammals help the forest by eating many types of harmful insects, larvae and worms. They aerate the soil by digging and fertilize the ground.

So, the next time a little be-whiskered peanut-sized critter pops out of the snow in front of your Sorel boot, can you tell if it is a mouse, vole or shrew?

White footed mouse: This little four-inch-long guy (excluding his tail) lives in just about everyone’s woodpile. His fur is rusty brown to pale gray with white on his undersides and feet. His eyes are big, round and black and he has big rounded ears.

Voles: Voles are relatives of the hamsters. They are brownish-gray and have cute, rounded heads and no pointy nose like a mouse. They have tiny eyes and a much shorter tail than the mouse. They are abundant in the woods as well as in swampy areas. Voles are often called field mice too.

Short-tailed shrew: The shrew is not a rodent like the mouse and the vole. The shrew is a hunter and the only poisonous animal in Michigan. Fortunately, his poisonous bite is so small it will only numb your fingertip. But it will paralyze a worm or a big beetle that the shrew would like to capture and eat. Shrews are smaller than mice and voles, and they have a dark gray plush very velvety looking fur.

It is hard to imagine creatures as small as these three surviving the harshness of an Upper Michigan winter. So, yes, a nice blanket of snow provides warmth, cover and hunting grounds for these wee ones that like to squeak.

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Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.