Goin’ on a vole hunt

We have a small garden in our backyard. Every year we plant tomatoes around the perimeter of our yard and plant all kinds of vegetables in our little garden. Last year I didn’t have much success growing bell pepper plants from seeds, so we bought some bell pepper plants instead. In addition to the tomato and bell pepper plants, we planted seeds for cucumbers, beans, yellow crookneck, and zucchini. Steve always says that if he were a starving pioneer back in the day, he would’ve planted zucchini because they grow like noxious weeds around here.

As we were planting, Kevin said he saw a ground hog come up out of a hole. Steve took a look and said, “I think Jonathan dug that hole,” and we both promptly dismissed it. The next day (which was Sunday) Steve came up to me while I was attempting an afternoon nap. He said, “We should have listened to Kevin. There’s a critter in our garden.” I looked out the window, and sure enough, there was a beady-eyed fuzzy poking his head out of a little hole. Two of my four pepper plants were gone too.

We thought that it was probably a gopher of some kind and tried the only thing we could think of to get rid of it. We put the hose down one of the holes and waited by the other one with a shovel. Surely if we flushed it out with the water we could bop it on the head with the shovel as it came out of the other hole. Well, we had the water on full blast for about 40 minutes and nothing came out of any holes. No water, no gopher. It made us wonder where all the water was going.  We hoped that maybe it was a particularly stupid gopher and just drowned in his tunnels.

No such luck. About an hour later he was poking his head out of a new hole and my last two pepper plants were gone. After that, the little critter went to ground and we saw no sign of him for two days. My dad told me that it was possible that it was actually a vole, whatever that is. My parents have had them in their yard a few times. Then Tuesday night after we put all the kids to bed, Kevin came upstairs saying that he heard a weird sound outside his window and he thought it was the ground hog. Steve went down to his room to check it out and didn’t hear anything. Just as he was about to leave, he heard a rustling sound outside Kevin’s window. He went outside to check it out, and low and behold, there was the little varmint, down in Kevin’s window well.

After getting a good look at it and comparing it to pictures online, we decided that it was in fact a vole. Apparently they’re sometimes referred to as field mice and they can be one of the most destructive pests in your garden and lawn. Steve had some gopher bait, and he put that down the window well, but we weren’t very optimistic that it would work. After Steve took some pictures of it, he grabbed the shovel. We both thought that the vole would be too fast, but Steve was able to get him with the shovel. After looking up more information on voles (especially one particularly helpful site called getridofthings.com) we decided a few things. One, it was a good thing that we got rid of him. He would continue to eat all of our plants, and we’re lucky that he didn’t destroy our entire lawn. Two, it’s likely that there are more where this one came from. They’re apparently prolific breeders, basically mating all the time and having litters of 4-7 little voles year round.

But now that I know Kevin is basically some kind of divining rod for voles, I’ll just let him spot the next one for me. We’re hoping there won’t be a next one, but if there is, be vewy, vewy, quiet. We’re hunting voles! hahahahahaha