The Northern short-tailed shrew Blarina brevicauda and the Southern short-tailed shrew Blarina carolinensis are hard to tell apart unless you are an expert. For the rest of us, we can make an id by the range. The Northern can be found in MD but the Southern is not. I discovered it while emptying a large container of soil.

It didn’t want to stay still for a photo. It soon scurried off.

This guy was about 3.5 inches long.

“Northern Short-tailed Shrews have poisonous saliva. This enables them to kill mice and larger prey and paralyze invertebrates such as snails and store them alive for later eating.”

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

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