The Christmas Shrew

[BakerAunt]

On Christmas morning, my husband sat down at the computer. The dog was curled up in the soft chair on her blanket next to the desk. He looked over and saw a small creature making its way across the arm. It and the dog looked at each other while my husband exclaimed, "Oh, great, we have a mouse!" He did not want the dog to chase it, so he called her off the chair, and she joined me back in the dining area. (She probably would not have chased it; she seemed puzzled by its presence.) The creature scampered back to the bookcase, but then it re-emerged, and he noted it had a short tail and was a charcoal color. It was a shrew, and a rather tame one at that. It made its way into the corner where the dog had been lying and curled up in the warmth, oblivious to him.

He had me bring his work gloves, then he carefully folded the blanket around it. I opened the door, and he took it outside and across the road next to our shed and released it there. He later looked it up, and it is a short tail shrew, a common eastern shrew.

We are wondering how it got in. We are also wondering just how long it had been in the house, since it was not frightened of the dog or us and seemed perfectly ok with our conversation.

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[Mike Nolan]

We had a cat who used to catch voles in the back yard, bring them to the door in his mouth, and try to let them loose inside the house. He did the same thing with June bugs. He found out the hard way that squirrels are much harder to catch, one nearly chewed off his tail at the base, the vet was able to save it.

Your shrew may come back, or you may find you have a whole family of them. They can get in through a hole about the size of a quarter, and many door thresholds have a gap wider than that at the bottom.

Fortunately, they aren't considered as destructive as mice, though they will foul any food they get into. Mice will chew through plastic or even metal containers to get to the food inside. Two or three years ago mice chewed a hole in a foil bag of chocolate wafers and emptied the bag. (I've used chocolate, cocoa butter and peanut butter in mouse traps, they like all three.)

[Italiancook]

I think it's cute you had a Christmas shrew, BakerAunt. I seem to remember a story about one. I can understand if you don't think it's cute.

One summer morning, I hopped out of bed. I happened to look over my shoulder and saw a green frog attached to the wall above the head of the bed. Having been raised in a rural area, I probably could have handled the situation. Instead, I walked out of the bedroom to find my husband.

He didn't believe me until he saw it with his eyes. He grabbed a rag from the rag bag. He wrapped the rag around his hand then climbed on the bed. He successfully cupped the frog and carried it to the backyard for release.

I called the contractor to find out how we ended up with a frog on the wall. He expressed astonishment. "Your house is tight as a drum!" he said. He suggested the frog hopped in when the garage door and door to house were open for taking in groceries.

[Mike Nolan]

There are air spaces in the soffits that are necessary to prevent the attic from getting too humid and allowing mold to grow there, they're usually big enough for mice and sometimes squirrels to squeeze through. Around here a major problem is with raccoons getting into people's attics by chewing to enlarge any openings they find in wood or plastic. Overhead garage doors are another common entry point.

A few years ago I was sitting in our powder room and I heard a bird chirping, it sounded fairly close to me. Turns out a bird had either found or created a hole in the screening on the exhaust fan for that bathrom and had gotten into the piping for the exhaust fan and built a nest about two feet in.

[BakerAunt]

According to my husband's nature book, shrews are carnivores who mostly eat insects like flies and spiders, and it was certainly welcomed to any of those that it found.

A couple of years ago, we had a bat in the house. My husband actually heard it before he saw it. We opened the back door, and he made some movement behind it, and it went right to the door and flew out. On a sadder note, three years ago, the chimney sweep found that two bats had gotten into our chimney and died. When we got the woodstove, the installer failed to tell us that a chimney cap was needed. We had one installed ASAP.

[Mike Nolan]

We seldom even see bats here, when I was growing up in rural NW Illinois we generally got one in the house about once a year.

[navlys]

Two days ago my husband found ants in the bathroom. He wasn't as humanitarian as some of you, he didn't trap them and release them, he smashed them and then put out ant traps. Our house sits on a slab and somehow the ants came up for the holiday festivities. Bad move.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm not sure it's even possible to trap and release ants.

In Lincoln if you trap an animal like a raccoon or a possum, you can only take them a short distance, like 400 yards, before releasing them. Like that's going to make much difference to an animal that has a normal range of a mile!

[chocomouse]

Just now, I've been watching a possum on my deck (its 12:30 p.m.), eating the birdseeds that have fallen to the floor. We see it most every night on the Ring camera, but lately it's been out in the daytime, eating apple scraps that the turkeys took down from the apple trees. We leave the possums alone -- they eat ticks!

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