The Unwelcome Roommates

Happy New Year! I returned from my careless gamboling at my parent's cabin to find that I was now sharing my house with several other mammals. Unfortunately they are not mammals of the human variety.

Apparently, despite their snaky little tails, their ability to climb, the way they run really really fast, the squeaking noises they make, and the way the sight of them indoors makes me jump up on a chair, shrews are not actually rodents. So I'm going to just think of them as really tiny koala bears with tails and a fast metabolism. Aw, tiny koala bears in my house! How sweet.

One of the alarming things about shrews is that they have poor vision, so they might actually run over your feet with their little clammy toes. They might think your toes are worms, and try to eat them. Despite their meek appearance they are frighteningly ferocious, by all accounts, as they EAT MICE. Yes, they chomp up animals larger than themselves. They look like someone grabbed them by the nose and pulled. They don't have any cheeks.

At first I was relieved when I identified my roommate, who was hiding behind the stove and popping out for crumbs, as a shrew, not a mouse. Then mom read me an essay about them, and I found the disgust creeping back in. Don't get me wrong, I think they are supremely awesome out in the woods eating beetles and seeds and caterpillars and things, but they are not supremely awesome in my house, throwing parties and running up and down the stairs without even acknowledging my presence. I wouldn't mind them in the basement, because then they would simply be helping themselves to the spiders and beetles and wood lice that normally inhabit basements. Come to think of it, I have noticed a surprising lack of those things in the last few days while painting the basement. Suddenly it all makes sense!

But my mom read to me that they eat three times their own body weight every day, so I'm guessing that makes for slim pickings in the basement, and so they've set up camp in my kitchen underneath the dishwasher, though they are also fond of the space behind the stove. So far they have been content with crumbs, but I am very suspicious of their sense of restraint, and hope to goodness they don't find a way into my food cupboard.

Yesterday when I thought it was mice my brother brought me a pair of traps. I set them up along their trails and thought for sure I'd get them that same night, but no. I must confess that I was actually squatting on a chair while doing dishes today, because standing by the sink would bring my toes in the alarming vicinity of one of the holes. However squatting over the sink was not extremely comfortable, and I felt embarrassed and more than a little foolish – what mouse in its right mind would run out while I was there, making a racket in the sink? But as the Good Book says, some foolishness is actually wisdom. Moments after I finished up the washing, who should pop his pointy little nose out of the hole but Mr. Shrew himself (only I didn't know it was a shrew yet, remember). Astonished, and frozen on my chair, I watched with anticipatory hope and horror as he stuck his furry little body completely inside the trap, and I could see by the little wiggly movements that he was indeed sampling the peanut butter.

I waited, certain that at any moment, the trap would snap shut and I would somehow have to figure out how to pick it up and empty it without crying. Imagine my surprise when the little bugger waltzed right back out and into his hole. Several seconds later another furred thing crept from behind the stove and found something to nibble, despite my having been excessively careful with my food. This is when I identified it as a shrew, and so I suspected the other one was as well, explaining why it didn't trigger the mouse trap. Too tiny, too fast. I'm not sure how many I have on my hands. At least two that travel slightly under the speed of light, or perhaps just one that travels at the speed of light.

It would be nice to have a kitchen cleanup crew somewhere in between a shrew and silverfish. Silverfish are those shiny little creatures (of the order thysanura) who come out at night and eat up starchy crumbs. They at least don't poop (not visibly, anyway, they're so tiny), and I don't think they rifle through the cupboards. Come to think of it, I have seen absolutely no silverfish around here either.

If I'm thinking really big, it would be nice to have a little household creature that ate up dust and skin cells and fallen hair, which would make vacuuming unnecessary. Talk about symbiosis.

eta: this was actually written January 6th, more drama has ensued since then, which you may or may not hear about