A Shrewd Discovery on the Trail

A SHREWD DISCOVERY ON THE TRAIL

Wednesday, January 17, 2007 (Napanee Beaver)

Friday, January 19, 2007 (Picton Gazette)

As we hit the trail at daybreak on the west side of Prince Edward County, there were moments when we both felt that our faces were beginning to slide off the sides of our heads. The brisk wind off Weller’s Bay cut through our coats, and efforts to photograph some of the sights were brief. After such a mild winter leading up to this particular day, a normally tolerable minus seven degrees with a minus 13 degree wind chill somehow felt much colder.

Suddenly, the shelter of a deciduous woodlot blocked the unrelenting breeze and the walking became more pleasant. It was then that our dog spotted something in the path. It was small enough that even I had to get down on my knees to see what it was that had suddenly captured her attention. It was a rodent-like creature of some sort, but appeared as only a tiny round ball of smooth slate grey fur, coiled tightly where it had died, probably in the night, caught by the sudden freeze and unable to find shelter.

The animal was a shrew, but what species was unclear as it was surely frozen solid. There are 11 species listed for Canada, but fewer than half of them can be expected in the Quinte area. The shrews belong to an order that also includes moles, a sort of wastebasket into which small primitive mammals of uncertain affinities have been unceremoniously dumped. The order is call Insectivora, and as the name suggests, they are largely insect eaters, so they are not rodents, although superficially they may resemble one.

In my collection of “props” that I often take with me on guided hikes, is a preserved pigmy shrew. My wife prefers not to know about any dead animals I might have stashed away in my office, but I keep this one, simply because it is the smallest mammal in North America. It currently resides in one of those miniature sample jam jars, and its small form never fails to amaze participants on hikes when I take it out of my backpack. It is not known how this one died, but it was given to me many years ago by a friend who lives on Highway 33, east of Picton. The Atlas of the Mammals of Ontario (1994) says, that while the pigmy shrew ranges across Ontario, fewer sight records were obtained for this species than for any of the remaining five species documented. Other shrew species treated in the book included smoky, common, water, short-tailed and least shrews.

Shrews are always in a highly revved up state, and with this high metabolic rate, they feed almost constantly when not sleeping, so are active all winter. It is little wonder they live for only 18 months, or so. Their eyes and ears are not well developed, so they depend largely on their sense of touch and smell to get around and find food. Shrews are not my area of expertise, so I still have no idea what this species was that we found in the centre of the trail.

The order also includes the moles, and among the strangest in this family is the star-nosed mole. These weird little creatures occasionally turn up on our front lawn, getting most of their information about the environment around them by the numerous nasal tentacles around the nose. As it roots around, these tentacles are cleverly folded over the nostrils to keep dirt from entering the nasal passages. There are actually 22 of these little symmetrical finger-like tentacles. Count them the next time you find a star-nosed mole. Like the shrews, its eyesight is relatively poor, but why have good eyesight when the only thing to look forward to is the next grain of dirt ahead of you?

If the nose wasn’t peculiar enough, the tail of the star-nosed mole is even more so. It is long and fleshy with a noticeable basal constriction, somewhat scaly and during the summer, covered with unsightly hairs. But in the winter, the tail becomes thick with stored fat, and becomes greasy to the touch. Not an animal you might want to keep as a pet and cuddle up close to on cold nights.

There are only two other moles that we can expect to find in the Quinte area – the eastern mole and the hairy-tailed mole. Then there are the voles, but that’s another story, and another entirely different family.

Meanwhile, the shrew that our dog found, and subsequently lost interest in, still lay in the centre of the trail. I picked it up and dropped it to the side of the trail where it bounced and rolled down the side of the embankment like a small stone. We talked about the shrew for several minutes during our walk, wondering what circumstances had contributed to it ending up in the centre of the trail where it was exposed to bitter temperatures. Had it been looking for food during the night, then lacking any measurable success, succumbed to the cold as it took a break by curling up, and never recovered?

It’s these kinds of discoveries that lend interest to hikes. It was a tiny, almost insignificant fragment in the greater scheme of things, considering the distance we walked that morning. However, it is discoveries like this that remind us how little we do know about the private lives of animals, and as nature film makers John and Janet Foster often say, “The best ending to a wildlife story is a mystery.”