I was walking in the woods last week when I saw a small, furry flash race across the ground. It was too small to be a squirrel, and a little too big to be a mouse. I thought that I might have seen a mole, but this animal had small feet and lacked the flappy scuttling motion that a mole’s oversized feet would make. I stood there, puzzled by what I had seen. Was it a rat? What was it? Upon further reflection, I remembered the animal’s long snout and beady eyes. It was then that I realized I hadn’t seen a mouse or a rat or a mole…I had seen a shrew.