Short-tailed shrews turn up across a wide slice of West Virginia’s forest floor, from the low river bottoms at Harpers Ferry to the steep hardwood slopes of the New River Gorge and the moist high forests of Monongahela National Forest. With 125 records, this is one of the state’s more frequently documented small mammals, though most people never see one; they live under the leaf litter, not on top of it.
A tunnel under every kind of West Virginia forest
The species doesn’t need a particular forest type, just deep leaf litter, loose soil, and enough cover to tunnel through. That’s true in the rich bottomland duff along the Potomac and Shenandoah at Harpers Ferry, in the steep hardwood coves dropping into the New River Gorge, and in the damp understory of the high Allegheny forests around Monongahela National Forest.
A venomous bite for an animal this small
Unlike almost anything else on this list, the short-tailed shrew has toxic saliva strong enough to subdue prey larger than itself, including insects, earthworms, and occasionally small vertebrates. It burns through energy fast and forages nearly around the clock, often reusing tunnels and runways other small mammals have already dug.
Status in West Virginia
NatureServe ranks the short-tailed shrew S5, secure, and it is native to West Virginia. Records come in throughout the year, with a rise in early summer that likely reflects more people out on the trails rather than any real change in the shrew’s own habits.
