Shrew

“ As he trailed along the winding of the tunnel, his motion made a faint, dry, whispering sound. This delicate sound, together with his peculiar, sickly, elusive scent, travelled just before him, and reached the doorway of the little chamber where the shrew was sleeping. The sleeper awoke,—wide awake all at once, as it behoves the wild kindreds to be. ”

“ The shrew-mouse has the same tastes as the mole: it is an ardent hunter of small game, a devourer of larvæ and insects, as you can see by its finely serrate teeth. Its slender body, made for squeezing into the smallest hole, and its long snout, shaped for prying into the narrowest crannies and crevices, enable it to go wherever vermin may be lurking. Woe to the wood-louse rolled up like a tiny pellet in some crack in the wall, and to the slug hiding under a stone! The shrew-mouse will have no difficulty in catching them, being so small that it could make its home in a nutshell. ”

“ The intensity of its colouring seemed to vibrate in the unclouded [Pg 158] radiance. Suddenly, from just beneath the stone on which it rested, slipped forth the shrew, and darted at it with a swift, scrambling leap. The beautiful insect, however, was wide awake, and saw the danger in good time. One beat of its wide, gorgeous wings uplifted its light body as a breath softly uplifts a tuft of thistledown. The baffled shrew jumped straight into the air, but in vain; and the great butterfly went flickering off aimlessly and idly over the pasture to find some less perilous basking-place. ”

“ Mice larger and much more powerful than the shrew are persistently attacked and, finally giving out, are pounced upon and the flesh torn from their heads and necks with ravening eagerness. One day a passing observer heard a loud squealing on a railroad bank where an examination revealed a short-tailed shrew dragging away a nearly dead pine mouse, though the mouse was much the heavier. The notes of shrews are a fine tremulous squeak which becomes a longer, harsher, and more twittering or chattering cry when they are angry. ”

“ What fools we mortals are, for I who wrote of shrews married a shrew who is more shrewful than any Kate from Padua. I laugh at my own defeat, a shrew beside a shrew, players nodding at my marital bewilderment, I, the drunkard drunk on illusions. ”

“ The shrew who shrieks at a drunkard only makes him dive further into the gulf in search of oblivion; the shrew who snaps constantly at a servant makes the girl dull, fierce, and probably wicked; the shrew who tortures a patient man ends by making him desperate and morose; the shrew who weeps continually out of spite, and hopes to earn pity or attention in that fashion, ends by being despised by men and women, abhorred by children, and left in the region of entire neglect. ”

“ The shepherd's inference was wrong; he did not know—few do—that the shrew has the singular habit, when surprised on the surface and in danger, of remaining motionless and uttering shrill cries. His foot, set down close to it, had set it screaming; the small butterfly, no doubt disturbed at the same moment, was there by chance. ”

“ Not even the long-eared rabbit can detect the faintest shade of a sound quicker than the shrew, and only the bat equals his sense of touch. [Pg 140] Like that flyer, the shrew can detect an obstacle in time to avoid it, even when running at full speed, by becoming conscious of some subtle change in the air-pressure.
Among the great throng of little wild folk playing at hide-and-seek with death among the fallen logs, and in the labyrinth of passageways in the beds of sand and moss and fern, no one was swifter than this one, the smallest of them all. ”

“ The mouse bites. The shrew eats. Boring in, the shrew secures a grip with its long, crooked, crocodile jaws filled with fierce teeth, and devours its way like fire through skin and flesh and bone, worrying out and swallowing mouthfuls of blood and flesh until the mouse falls over dead. ”

“ But such a mistake on the part of any creature not larger than a ground-sparrow or wood-mouse or lizard would have resulted in instant doom; for this tiny beast, indomitable as a terrier and greedy for meat as a mink, was the mole-shrew.
Having devoured the fat grub, and finding his appetite still unappeased, the shrew at once resumed his vehement digging. His marvellously developed nostrils had assured him that a little farther on beneath the turf were more grubs, or well-conditioned earthworms, or the stupid, big red-brown beetles called "May-bugs." ”

“ In that very instant, while he was in the midst of this awkward effort to turn, the shrew fell upon him, gripping and tearing his soft, unprotected flank.
The mole was not altogether deficient in character; and he was larger and heavier than his assailant. Seeing that escape was impossible, and stung by the pain of his wounds, he flung himself with energy into the struggle, biting desperately and striving to bear down his lighter [Pg 162] opponent. It was a blind smother of a fight, there in that pitch-black narrow tunnel whose walls pressed ceaselessly upon it and hemmed it in. ”

“ The tail of a shrew, when burned and powdered, was considered as a certain remedy for the bite of a dog; only the tail must be cut from a living shrew.
I have already made casual mention of the shrews of the land.
Two species of land-shrews are recognised as inhabitants of England. One is the common SHREW, or SHREW-MOUSE (Sorex vulgáris) , which for a long time was thought to be identical with the water-shrew. The fringed feet and tail, however, afford sufficient indications that it is a distinct species. ”

“ Sitting hunched up on its platform, the head with its massive bulbous beak drawn against its arched back, the little thing is less like a bird than a mammal in appearance—a singularly coloured shrew, let us say. The colour is indeed strange, the whole body, the thick, fleshy, snout-like beak included, being a deep, intense, almost indigo blue, and the loose hair-like down on the head and upper parts a light, bright primrose yellow. ”

“ Round and round the storehouse the battle surged for a long half hour, with the shrew always between the doorway and his struggling, leaping opponents. [Pg 143] The grain-fed mice lacked the blood-bought endurance of their opponent. The young mouse who had led the shrew to the storehouse was the first to go. In the very middle of a leap, he staggered and fell at the feet of his enemy. Instantly the long curved jaws closed on his head, and the fierce teeth of the shrew crunched into his brain. ”

“ If one of these dead shrews be taken, and its little mouth opened, an array of sharply-pointed teeth [27] will be seen, something like those of the mole, very like those of the hedgehog; but not at all resembling those of the mouse.
The shrew is an insect and worm-devouring creature, for which purpose its jaws, teeth, and whole structure are framed. A rather powerful scent is diffused from the shrew; and probably on that account cats will not eat a shrew, though they will kill it eagerly. ”

“ They are worth studying for a few days, but their dreadful odour and fierce character make them anything but pets. I suppose there is hardly any animal in England so fierce and combative, and probably that may account for the fact that one so often comes across a dead shrew lying on the path in summer.
When swimming, the shrew's furry coat perfectly resisted the entrance of moisture; it always came out absolutely dry. The said coat was most carefully kept in order; a daily brushing and cleansing went on the little tongue was often at work licking off every little speck of dust ”

“ Weasels, owls, and cats are also great shrew-killers; though, strange to say, the shrew, when killed, is by no means always eaten. I put this down in the main to the powerful scent-glands, which run along the side of the body, or occur at the root of the tail, in most species of shrew, and which secrete a very strong and odorous liquid. ”

“ In the stem of an ash-tree a hole was bored; into the hole a poor shrew was thrust alive, and the orifice immediately closed with a wooden plug. The animal strength of the shrew passed by absorption into the substance of the tree, which ever after cured shrew-struck animals by the touch of a leafy branch.
The poor creature that was imprisoned, Ariel-like, in the tree, was, fortunately for itself, not gifted with Ariel’s powers of life; and the orifice of the hole being closed by the plug, we may hope that its sufferings were not long, and that it perished immediately for want of air. ”

“ The greatest masters who ever made studies of the shrew in fiction or in history have never, after all, given us a strictly scientific definition of the creature. They let her exhibit herself in all her drollery or her hatefulness, but they act in somewhat lordly fashion by leaving us to frame our definition from the picturesque data which they supply. ”

“ Probably no mammal is more numerous in the eastern United States than the short-tailed shrew. It occurs everywhere—in forests, in 594 brushy areas, in old fields, and along grassy banks. Within the city of Washington it is common in Rock Creek Park, where it lives in covered runs which it makes among the grass and fallen leaves. These shrews drink frequently, and this may in part account for their abundance near streams or other water, although it may be the desirable moist soil conditions which draw them to such situations. ”

“ The shrew mouse, especially in winter, fixes its residence in stables, hay-lofts, or barns; it feeds on grain, insects, and putrid flesh. It also resides in woods and fields, where it lives on grain; it sometimes conceals itself under moss, leaves, the trunks of trees, and sometimes in holes abandoned by moles, or in holes of a smaller size, which it digs for itself, with its claws and snout. The shrew produces, it is said, as many young at a time as the common mouse, but not so frequently. ”

“ Look at that poor shrew-mouse, for example, wriggling feebly on his stake, which the cunning bird has so managed to intertwine among the twigs as to make escape impossible; he must have been hanging there in torture for a week by his look, but the shrike will not eat him till the last possible moment, unless so minded. And that poor lizard, again, with his wonderful tenacity of life; he may have been impaled for a fortnight, yet the skin on his ribs still rises and falls with a faint breathing action. More merciful than nature, we will put him out of his pain ”

“ The Water Shrew is our largest species, the length of head and body combined varying from three to three and three-quarter inches, the body of bulkier build than that of the Common Shrew, and the tail longer than the body. Its upper parts are dark-coloured—from slaty black to dark brown—and the light ashy grey or dirty white of the under parts appear pure white by contrast. The snout is shorter and broader than that of the Common Shrew; the small eyes are blue, and the ears, which are entirely concealed, bear a tuft of white hairs. ”

“ And, thirdly, you will see that its tail, instead of gradually tapering to a pointed tip, is comparatively short, and is squared in a very curious manner. The fact is that the little animal is not a mouse at all, but a kind of shrew, of which there are many American species. One is large, and pushes through the top-soil like a mole. Another, smaller, is blackish, and has a short tail. The commonest one is mouse-gray and only two inches long plus a very long tail. It is fond of water, but has no such interesting habits as those of the European shrew next described. ”

“ It is said that the shrew-mouse bites horses’ feet and leaves incurable wounds. But how can a shrew-mouse, whose head is at most no larger than a pea, bite a horse and pierce its hide which is the thickness of a finger or more? ”

“ Now a shrew-ash is an ash whose twigs or branches, when gently applied to the limbs of cattle, will immediately relieve the pains which a beast suffers from the running of a shrew-mouse over the part affected: for it is supposed that a shrew-mouse is of so baneful and deleterious a nature, that wherever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened with the loss of the use of the limb. ”

“ Many of them are found starved to death on the melting snow, having crept up from their underground burrows through the shafts made by grass and weed-stems. Wandering over the white waste, they lose their way [Pg 43] and, failing to find food, starve before the sun is half way down the sky. As the shrew does not hibernate, his whole life is a swift hunt for food; for every day this apparently eyeless, earless animal must eat its own weight in flesh. The weasels kill from blood-lust, but the shrews kill for their very life’s sake. It is a fearsome sight to see a shrew attack a mouse. ”

“ If a shrew-mouse runs over your foot, it portends ill-luck, sometimes the coming ill-luck is defined as paralysis of the foot. In Sussex the country people have an idea that the shrew-mouse is unable to cross a path which has been trodden by man. Whenever it attempts to do so it is said to be immediately struck dead, and hence the number of shrew-mice which may be found lying dead in lanes or on field footpaths. If a hare crosses the path of a woman with child, she must instantly stoop down and tear her shift, or the child will have a hare-lip, or ’ar-shotten lip, as it is called (Shr.) ”

“ The nervous little shrew, smallest of all North American mammals, is distinctly mouse-like at first glance. Closer inspection, however, will reveal a very small, darting animal with long, pointed, quivering nose, tiny or hidden eyes and ears, a slender body, and a gray, velvet-like fur that brushes easily either way. Even the smallest shrews have razor-like teeth and vicious tempers, which give members of the mouse world great fear of these terrible little assassins. They will not hesitate to leap on fat mice twice their size and kill them with their tiny jaws. ”