Shrews

I can't even start to consider how many miles I have run on paths and trails over the years, but to give it a ball-park figure, I would say, a lot.  Over those years I have had the privilege of seeing nature close up: birds, bees, grasses, hares, owls, foxes and in one memorable encounter, a massive bull moose.  Not in the UK I hasten to add.
Anyway, I was toodling up through Ironwood this evening, and as I picked my way up the path narrowly missed the corpse of a shrew in the middle of the path.  My Brooks hit the ground on either side of the pathetic little bundle and I was struck by the fact that I have seen quite a lot of dead shrews over the afore-mentioned years.  Rats? Nope. Hedgehogs, not one. Mice? Pah.  No other animal approaches the shrew in public stiffs by a long chalk.

Now, why could this be?  I have a few suggestions;

1.  I am a shrew god and they sacrifice low-caste individuals at my feet.

2.  They run out of energy crossing the path.  After all , they do have a high metabolism and I totally understand what it feels like to have a low blood-sugar dip

3.  Predatory animals cast shrews in my path to make me slip up.  The thought of my foot pressing down on that little body and the contents sliding through the skin gives me the willies

4.  They like the idea of meeting their maker staring at the sky, and a path offers a clearing in the tree cover

5.  The creatures that like to eat mammal corpses don't like shrews

6.  There are loads of shrews; simply millions

7. They trip up a lot and inevitably injure themselves

I like the idea of a prime number list.  Oh wait, hang on, it's obvious - they are made of something that lasts forever.  Well, what happens to all the sparrows, deer, slow-worms and other wildlife?  You just don't see their peeling shells when they have come to the end of their allotted span - no, because they quickly decay.  Not the shrews - they just don't break down in the same way.  Perhaps they are alcoholics and therefore pickled, or perhaps their diet includes a mystery substance undiscovered by science that is anti-bacterial.  Whatever, I rather feel there is a fortune to be made by analysing the key ingredient in shrew corpses.  Please excuse me, I'm off out with a trowel and a carrier bag to collect some furry husks and find me a spectrometer or whatever they use now to isolate immortal substances.