Short-tailed shrews are amazing little native mammals and they are your best
natural pest control method for your home perimeter. Just exclude them from
the house by filling small foundation cracks (they can get through very
small cracks) and utility service openings in the skin of your home by using
low-expansion foam from any hardware store. These little dynamos are found
more common than mice in some areas (small mammal surveys) and they are
active year-round. They are our only venomous mammal (their Genus Blarina).
Their mild venom is less hazardous to you and me than the bacteria in their
bite. The venom travels in saliva along the fronts of their purple-grooved
incisors to get into their buggy prey. They successfully pursue prey as
large as mice and voles when necessary. Look for them under brush piles,
logs, rocks, and in the galleries under thick accumulations of seed husks
under your feeding stations.

Still in your basement after closing holes in your home's skin? Peanut
butter is a good bait for snap traps in the home.

Enjoy your local shrews. Remember, they bite!

Tom Bain
Central Ohio Clayey Till Plain
Delaware, Ohio 


-----Original Message-----
From: Ohio birds [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Steve
Cagan
Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2011 9:09 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [Ohio-birds] OT- domestic small mammal sighting

Hi all,

OK, OK, it¹s not a bird, but I think it might be of interest to some.

Here in our Cleveland Heights house, we¹ve had some mice recently. We
dispatch them with a traditional snap trap.

But a few days ago, Beth saw a mouse in the basement, I set a few traps and
yesterday morning we had one in a trap. But it looked wrong‹tail too short,
eyes too small, snout too pointy, ears too small, too gray...

This morning we had another animal like this‹I¹m quite sure what we had were
Short-tailed Shrews.

It¹s a life home invader for us!

Think we could interest some owls???

Best wishes,

Steve Cagan
Cleveland heioghts, Cuyahoga County

--------------------------------------------

Steve Cagan, photographer
[log in to unmask]
www.stevecagan.com
www.pbase.com/stevecagan
www.stevecagan.blogspot.com
216-932-2753 (USA)







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