The silky pocket mouse eats seeds, succulent parts of plants and nuts, and carries food in its cheek pouches.

It lives in low valley bottoms with soft soils, among weeds and shrubs, where it burrows in the sand to bury seed caches.

Its relatively short tail, which is buff or dusky colored above and white below, does not have a tuft of hair at the tip and is always shorter than the combined length of the head and body, which average about 60 mm (2.4 in).

It is present in the states of South Dakota, Nebraska, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma and possibly Wyoming (where it may be extinct).

When it moves fast, the silky pocket mouse proceeds with short, kangaroo-like bounds, but at slower speed it walks.

In between these it eats some of its stored seeds in the afternoon before emerging from its burrow to forage in the evening before temperature falls too low.

[4] Silky pocket mouse burrows may be open or closed (with the entrance blocked loosely with soil) in different parts of the range.

About eight tunnels radiate from the nesting chamber, some of which terminate in a storage room in which seeds or husks are cached and hidden behind loose soil.

This subspecies is considered threatened, but in general the silky pocket mouse faces no particular threats and is present in a number of protected areas.