This long-tailed thicket rat was recorded at Bulcha Forest and Arba Minch in southern Ethiopia. Adults described in 1984 had olive-brown backs and snow-white underparts. The adult female holotype measured 110 mm in head-and-body length and 173 mm in tail length.
The adults had olive-brown upperparts with gray hair bases and a snow-white underside, sharply separated from the back. The head was paler, and the adult holotype showed a distinct black eye stripe. The tail was dark brown above and paler below, with long hairs on its outer third. Juvenile paratype SMNS 23625 lacked the eye stripe and had browner hindfeet than the adults. The adult female holotype SMNS 24118 measured 110 mm head-and-body, 173 mm tail, 23 mm hindfoot, and 18 mm ear, and weighed 36 g. The adult male paratype SMNS 23624 had a 150 mm tail.
The adult female holotype SMNS 24118 was caught alive on 1 February 1976 at 1,800 m, where moist, broad gallery forest met bush savanna at the edge of Bulcha Forest. The Arba Minch specimens came from a similar landscape. Published observations there recorded one animal on the ground in a low thornbush and another about 5 m above ground in a gallery-forest tree. A dead female with three young was found in a grass-lined cavity of a felled acacia; the authors estimated that the cavity had been an estimated 10 m above ground before the tree fell.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.