Shrews inside a house?

[valleyhead]

Hi, I am new to this site and I hope that i am not starting off on the wrong foot!
Recently we have had an influx of mice in our house, and I have had to put traps down to try and get some control over them. The traps have mainly been in the upstairs of the house, and it seems that things have quietened down. However, this morning I checked a trap which had been down and baited for a week, only to find a shrew in it.
It surpised me that it was in the house at all, but I am more surpised that it is upstairs. The house is old and has plenty of cracks etc...in it's old stone walls.
Has anyone experienced this sort of thing before?

[Dogghound]

Certainly not a common occurrence although shrews have been recorded in buildings before. Shrews need to regularly feed on invertebrates, which are unlikely to be in high numbers (other than smaller groups or the odd spider) in a house. They feed heavily on ground beetles, woodlice, spiders, snails and worms. Do you have a cat? could this have brought it in?

[The Woodman]

Hi valleyhead and welcome to WAB.

Shrews in houses aren't as common as mice and voles in my experience. Once in a while I see them and from memory, they've all been in older, stone built, unoccupied houses with rank gardens.

I think those circumstances are to do with the proximity of their preferred habitats to the house and lack of disturbance.

Are your traps the humane variety? I wouldn't imagine a shrew would come to bait of the usual kind in a lethal trap as they are insectivores.

[valleyhead]

Hi, thanks to you both for your replies.
We don't have a cat, the trap which caught it was inside a piece of furniture which had had mice running through the back. The trap was up against a wall, and was probably simply in the shrew's line of travel. It was baited with chocolate! if the shrew had come out of wall cavities, it may have had a source of food in them..poss woodlice etc....
We have quite a bit of land around the house, and we have had lots of shrews out there in the past.
One day a couple of years ago we found ourselves literally surrounded by lots of shrews who all seemed to be running around at the same time...an area of long grass seemed to have come alive with them. I had not witnessed anything like this before.
Thanks again.

[JoulesH]

Last winter we caught a shrew 5 days running downstairs in our house (different shrews as it was not a live cage trap) using old cheese.