Saturday turned out to be quite the adventure.
We went over to a friend's to till their garden bed in order to help them prepare to plant their flower seedlings. They are starting a cut flower business and it was super fun seeing all of their seedlings ready and waiting to get into the ground. We were standing around chatting (minding our 6 foot COVID distances), when Eric stopped the tiller and picked something up. He held it for a while and seemed interested enough that it got the three of us guessing what treasure he found...a colorful stone, a coat hanger, a piece of pottery. He started to walk over to the side of the garden bed, then turned around and looked at us. He gave a sheepish smile and a goofy wave and I knew something was up, so headed down to where he was.
LITTLE FRIENDS!
A nest of 5 (sadly two were already dead, likely crushed by the tiller on his first pass). Eric knew I'd need to keep them of course, so was contemplating tossing them off to the side in order to avoid bringing home critters...good thing he knew better.
I laid the remaining 3 rodents in the garden while everyone started to spread minerals into the soil. Within a few minutes of the tiller being off, the soil started to move and I reached in to pull a 4th baby out, but nothing was there. It took a few seconds for all the wires to connect, but I suddenly realized it might be their mom. When this happened a second time, I stood quietly and watched and sure enough, a little nose popped out of the soil right around the babies. While the other 3 finished spreading the minerals, I tried so hard to catch the mama, but with no luck. She seemed to have a network of holes everywhere and the moment I tried to dig her out, she was gone.
Eric did another pass with the tiller and I replaced the babies into the garden, starting to lose hope that I'd be able to bring mom along. She was more cautious this second time, not coming up to the surface as often. Right before we were getting ready to leave, I figured it was now or never, so when I saw her nose poke through, I grabbed the soil as fast as possible and threw it into my little box. To my utter surprise, a rodent jumped out of the box! THE MAMA!! I just responded with automatic reflexes and grabbed her with my hands as she ran across the soil. I somehow miraculously managed to catch her and I threw her back into the box, slamming the lid shut. I popped the 3 babies into the box and we taped the lid for safe measures. I was so happy to have succeeded catching the mom to relocate with her babies AND our friends were happy to be rid of the rodent family in their garden.
When we got home we researched and it turns out I caught me a shrew family! We learned that shrews eat 3x their body weight a day and eat insects and other rodents. We realized that we'd never be able to feed the shrew adequately in captivity. In the hour it took us to decide to release her, she'd already dug new tunnels in the aquarium and moved all 3 babies underground. We dug a nice hole outside by the stone wall and dumped the mom into the hole and covered her with dirt. We placed the babies on top and covered them with leaves. Within 2 hours, one baby was already underground and the other two were crawling about on top of the leaves. I moved the leaves to find a nice tunnel under them and placed both babies in the opening of the hole. They began crawling down into the hole and out of site.
Not sure if that's the last we'll see of the shrew family, but we certainly hope they enjoy living on the farm.
