We have had the unusual pleasure of sharing our house with a little shrew for the last few days. We often have shell-shocked voles lurking in the corner of the kitchen (thanks to our cats), which are duly given time to recover then released in the garden. But this is the first shrew I have seen for about five years.
A mercurial creature, he announced his presence by a loud gnawing sound from behind the dresser, followed by a flash of brown as he zipped past the dresser, out of the kitchen door down the corridor, and into the front porch. Over a few days, he frequently revisited the kitchen in a high-speed dash, and I took pity on him and put a small box with water and a smidgeon of wet catfood to keep him going till he could be caught. Twice I heard him eating his breakfast, and twice I snatched up the box to find he had silently vanished in front of my very eyes.
This morning, I saw him going for his morning constitutional to the porch, but only an hour or so later, he came back. But this time, instead of venturing into the dusty recesses behind the dresser or his breakfast box, he carried straight on into the corner of the kitchen and disappeared into one of the mouse refuges my husband built into the plinths. These are aluminium tubes with a closed end that can be slid out and capped by a milk-bottle top. My little furry companion was conveyed into the long grass in the garden, to be set free at last. So, farewell then, Sorex araneus. I’ll miss your high-speed antics.
My mum always used to say a shrew will starve if it doesn’t eat every few hours, a fact confirmed by Wikipedia. So, apart from a tiny portion of catfood, he obviously found lots to eat in the house. Spiders and woodlice I suspect? Says a lot for my invertebrate-friendly style of housekeeping!