With 71 records and a NatureServe rank of secure, the northern short-tailed shrew is one of the better-documented small mammals in DC. Rock Creek Park alone accounts for 18 of the records, thanks to its deep, undisturbed leaf litter and soft forest soil, and the U.S. National Arboretum’s cultivated grounds add a smaller but steady cluster.
This shrew spends most of its life below the surface, digging its own shallow tunnels through soil and leaf litter or borrowing runways other small mammals have already made. It’s also one of the few venomous mammals in North America, using toxic saliva to subdue insects, earthworms, and snails, and its metabolism runs so high that it has to eat close to its own body weight in food every day just to keep going.
Records show up across the calendar with no single dominant season, which fits a species that stays active underground through the winter rather than hibernating or migrating.
