Shedd is a hamlet of about two hundred people on Oregon Route 99E, between Albany and Halsey, where the whole community sits inside working grass seed and grain country. Harvesters and combines flush field rodents in August and September, and those displaced animals look for the nearest barns, then the nearest houses, as fall rains arrive. The old farmsteads here, many built in the 1920s and 1930s, have stone foundations and crawl spaces with generous original gaps.
Homes in Shedd are mostly farmhouses and ranches from the 1920s through the 1950s, with a few newer builds on small acreage, and almost every property includes barns or equipment sheds. Grass seed and grain operations surround the community on every side, so harvest season moves thousands of rodents toward the nearest buildings at once. Properties near Thompson's Mills also see steady deer mouse traffic from the creek-bottom cover along the water.