Shrews can be trapped using standard mouse snap traps or small live-capture box traps, but their tiny size, extreme metabolism, and venomous bite require some adjustments you wouldn’t make for ordinary mice. Before you set anything, it’s worth confirming you’re actually dealing with shrews and checking whether your local species has legal protections.
Make Sure It’s Actually a Shrew
Shrews are frequently mistaken for mice or voles, but the differences are easy to spot once you know what to look for. A shrew has a sharp, pointed nose, pinpoint eyes, fur-covered ears, and a short tail (roughly an inch long on the common northern short-tailed shrew). The whole animal is only about 4 to 5 inches long, with stubby legs and dark gray fur.
Mice, by contrast, have large prominent eyes, big ears, and tails about as long as their bodies. Voles are chunkier, tawny brown in summer, and have blunt noses with tails ranging from 1.5 to 2.5 inches. If the animal you’re seeing has a pointy snout and almost invisible eyes, you’re dealing with a shrew.
Check Local Trapping Laws First
Some shrew species are legally protected. In Scotland, for example, all shrew species are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and using any trap to kill or capture a shrew is an offense without a license. In the United States, protections vary by state and species. Several shrew species are listed as threatened or endangered in individual states even if they lack federal protection. A quick check with your state wildlife agency will tell you whether you need a permit or whether the species on your property is off-limits entirely.
Snap Traps for Lethal Control
Standard wooden or plastic mouse snap traps work on shrews. The key is placement: set traps at a right angle to the shrew’s runway (the narrow trail it follows repeatedly through grass, leaf litter, or along a foundation wall), with the trigger plate positioned directly over the path. Shrews follow the same routes obsessively, so a trap sitting even a few inches off the runway will catch nothing.
Peanut butter is a common bait, but shrews are insectivores, not seed-eaters. A small dab of peanut butter can still work as an attractant, though bits of bacon, cat food, or even a mealworm tend to be more effective. The trigger sensitivity matters too. Shrews weigh very little, sometimes under half an ounce, so if your snap trap has an adjustable trigger, set it to the lightest possible release.
Live Traps and Why Timing Matters
Small box-style live traps (sometimes called Sherman or Longworth traps) are the standard for capturing shrews alive. Place them parallel to and inside the shrew’s runway, or along walls near the foundation of your house. The trap entrance should sit flush with the ground so the shrew doesn’t have to climb to enter.
Here’s the critical detail: shrews have one of the highest metabolic rates of any mammal. They need to eat roughly every two to three hours or they risk starvation and death. If you use a live trap, you must check it frequently, ideally every few hours and no less than twice a day. Leaving a live trap unchecked overnight in cold weather can easily kill a trapped shrew. Place bedding material (dry grass, cotton, or shredded paper) inside the nest chamber and include a small amount of food like mealworms or cat kibble. If the trap has a sloped design, position it so the nest chamber tilts slightly downward away from the entrance to keep rainwater from soaking the bedding.
Some live traps allow you to adjust treadle sensitivity. Dial it to the lightest setting. If the trap was designed for mice and has a hole modification (a 12mm escape hole that lets shrews pass through during general rodent surveys), you’ll want to block that hole. A brass washer glued over the opening with epoxy resin prevents the shrew from escaping and stops rodents from gnawing the hole larger.
Where to Place Traps
Shrews stick to cover. They rarely cross open ground. The best trap locations are along foundation walls, under dense shrubs, beneath leaf litter or mulch, along garden borders, and inside any visible surface runways in the grass. These runways look like narrow, tunnel-like paths about an inch wide, often found by parting thick grass or ground cover near the base of structures.
If shrews are getting into your house, look for entry points at ground level: gaps around pipes, cracks in the foundation, uncovered vents. Shrews can squeeze through openings smaller than a quarter inch. Setting traps directly adjacent to these entry points, on the exterior side, tends to be more productive than trapping indoors. Indoors, place traps along walls in basements, garages, or crawl spaces where you’ve noticed droppings or heard rustling.
Handle Shrews With Caution
Several shrew species, most notably the northern short-tailed shrew, are venomous. They produce toxic saliva that they use to paralyze insects and small prey. A bite from a venomous shrew can cause significant swelling and pain in humans. In at least one documented case involving a related Asian species, a shrew bite on the foot led to blood clotting problems and elevated blood pressure. The venom isn’t life-threatening for a healthy adult, but it’s unpleasant enough that you should always wear thick gloves when handling traps or relocating a live shrew. Never pick one up bare-handed.
Shrews also carry disease. Northern short-tailed shrews are known hosts of Camp Ripley virus, a type of hantavirus, and researchers recently identified a novel henipavirus in the same species. Henipaviruses are related to some of the most dangerous known zoonotic viruses. While no human cases from North American shrew-borne henipaviruses have been confirmed yet, the prudent approach is to treat shrew droppings, nesting material, and carcasses the way you would mouse contamination: wear gloves, avoid stirring up dust from droppings, and dispose of dead shrews in sealed bags.
Sealing Them Out for Good
Trapping alone rarely solves a shrew problem if entry points remain open. Shrews are small enough to fit through any gap a mouse can, which means any opening a quarter inch or wider is a potential door. Inspect your foundation, vent covers, pipe penetrations, and door sweeps at ground level.
The fix is quarter-inch hardware cloth (wire mesh with 1/4 x 1/4-inch openings) in at least 24-gauge thickness. Secure it over vents, crawl space openings, and any cracks or gaps you find. Half-inch mesh, which is adequate for rats and most larger rodents, is too large for shrews and mice. Use corrosion-proof or galvanized mesh, especially in damp areas near the ground. Seal smaller gaps around pipes with steel wool packed tightly and covered with caulk.
Reducing ground cover immediately adjacent to your foundation also helps. Shrews depend on dense vegetation, leaf litter, and mulch for safety. A 12-to-18-inch gravel or bare-soil buffer around your home’s perimeter makes the approach less appealing and exposes shrews to predators they’d rather avoid.