Ants eating a northern short-tailed shrew (Blarina brevicauda), an echolocating animal with neurotoxic, paralytic saliva. These shrews eat small things (seeds, worms, insects) like you’d expect but also rather large things (rabbits, birds, snakes) that should give you pause about how something so cute can be so venomous. This one was probably killed by one of my cats, but was left on the sidewalk because of the odor they emit … apparently a lot carnivores refuse to eat them. I blamed my cats for being wasteful at the time, but I feel bad for being so judgmental.
As for the ants, I think they are in the genus Formica, perhaps Formica pallidefulva if I had to take a wild guess … but detail of the photograph might not permit an identification even by somebody who knows ant identification (um, not me).
