Trolling for Voles - An Action Plan - Rscholz@comcast.net

Trolled by Voles? An Action Plan by rscholz@comcast.net We've been having some problems with voles in our garden. Voles just laugh at the little electric fence around our garden like a horse might laugh at a barrier two feet high which is supposed to keep it out of greener pastures. Usually we get a lot of broccoli over the growing season. This year... Nada, Zilch, Fugetaboutit. However, the voles have had lots of broccoli this season. You might say our garden is full of happy, healthy "broccoli fed" voles hmmm!

Here's a little story about my latest attempt to reduce the Vole population.

Carl speaks...

CaddyShack dialog: Sandy: [with heavy Scottish brogue]: Carl, I want you to kill all the gophers on the course.

Carl: Check me if I'm wrong, Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers, they'll lock me up and throw away the key.

Sandy: Not golfers, you great git! Gophers- the little brown, furry rodents!

Carl: We can do that. We don't even have to have a reason.

Sandy: Aye! Well, do it, man!

Carl: All right. Let's do the same thing, but with gophers. [Sandy storms off] It's not my fault nobody can understand what you're saying.

As you may recall if you're a Caddyshack fan, this dialog occurs right after Judge Smails arrives at Bushwood Country Club in his Rolls Royce and witnesses a gopher shaking a golf pin flag so hard it falls over.

When I went out to see how the garden was doing yesterday I witnessed a similar sight. Only in this instance it was one of our broccoli plants that was shaking mightily. I crept up to see what was causing the poor broccoli to shake so violently and what to my wondering eyes did appear? There, under the spreading broccoli tree, our current garden nemesis was hard at work. A big healthy vole was shaking

the broccoli madly as he feasted on our lovely broccoli... Sheesh!

Typically I'm a live-and-let-live kinda guy and there is no doubt that voles are kinda cute. But we put way too much effort in to trying to grow broccoli during Michigan's short growing season to devote all of the plants to this cute little culprit... really!

Once upon a time, when the world was much younger than it is today (last May) I tried to put a dent in our garden vole population by placing one of my favorite mouse traps out in the garden.

These traps work great and they are super east to use! I put one out in the garden near a vole hole anticipating easy success. Mentally speaking I was already popping-the-cork on my Victory-overVoles celebratory champagne. Alas, it was not to be. Put the celebratory champagne back in the old mental fridge. Cold hard reality has once again chimed in with one of its favorite sayings... "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley.� R. Burns

Not only did my trap not catch a vole but my Press 'N Set mousetrap was broken to pieces... smashed to smithereens really, as were my dreams of having a vole free garden. How did this happen? Surely a vole which is not much bigger than a mouse could not wreak such havoc on my little plastic trap. My guess is that I was witnessing the aftermath of a Fox Squirrel's fit of pique. I can't keep Fox Squirrel's out of the garden but they typically don't bother the plants much. The bait I use for voles (peanut butter) is also very attractive to squirrels. My guess is that the destruction of my trap occurred when a squirrel tried to have a peanut butter snack, the trap snapped and a highly annoyed fox squirrel proceeded to destroy the trap to get the rest of his snack... Yoiks!

After my Press 'N Set setback my brain went into hibernation regarding the problem of our garden voles and their garden plundering ways. Yes, I was stymied.

Until this weekend. When Barb brought in the daily haul from the garden I was shocked. The voles were really munching a lot of our produce. Barb brought in half eaten carrots and beets and several zucchini showing significant vole munchage too! Yoiks!

So I asked my brain if it would mind coming out of hibernation so that it could give the old college try at solving our vole problem once again.

How, I wondered, could I make a trap that would keep Fox Squirrels out but let voracious voles in? I needed a vision... you know, like Joan of Arc had so many years ago.

Yes I needed a vision for inspiration just like Joan's vision helped her... well, her vision did lead to getting burned at the stake. That doesn't sound like much fun. I'd prefer a vision that didn't lead to

being burned at the stake... you know, like asking for Whopper without onions at Burger King 'cause you can "Have It Your Way...♍" If you know what I mean.

Well, I was graced with a vision. The vision looked like what you see below. In my mind I saw two bluebirds feeding on meal worms in the feeder I made last Spring and they inspired a solution to the problem of too many voles.

Last Spring we noticed some bluebirds coming to the bird feeder, but they looked kinda disappointed. I was pretty sure I knew why they were disappointed. Bluebirds like insects and our feeder has seeds and nuts. We wanted the bluebirds to stay around so I needed to make a bluebird feeder and stock it with dried meal worms. But bluebirds aren't the only birds that like meal worms. Starlings like meal worms. And starlings typically travel in flocks. When a flock of starlings finds a source of meal worms, the meal worms are all gone in a few short minutes leaving none for the bluebirds. So I made a bluebird feeder with an entrance that a bluebird could use but was too small for a starling. It worked.

It worked perfectly. The bluebirds could munch happily on meal worms but the starlings couldn't fit through the entrance hole. Note: I put pieces of clear plastic on both sides of the feeder so I could see the bluebirds while they were feeding and also so I could tell when the feeder needed to be replenished.

What did my vision tell me? It told me I needed to make a vole trap that voles could visit but that Fox Squirrel's were too big to get in to. So I did!

1. Hinged lid to provide human access to the trap 2. Seeds and nuts coated with peanut butter to place in the trap to attract voles 3. Jaws of Death 4. Vole sized entrance... too small for a Fox Squirrel 5. Transparent lid so you can see what's going on inside the trap.

Side note: an inexpensive source of cedar for outdoor projects is cedar fence planks. A six foot cedar fence plank typically cost about $4 at Home Depot or Lowe's. I keep a box of cedar fence plank scraps for just this sort of knicky-knacky project.

So did the trap work?

You bet your sweet bippy the trap worked! In the first two hours it caught two voles and a field mouse. "Caught" is probably a more appropriate way to describe what happens when I use a Hav-ahart trap to catch a woodchuck. Two voles were "rendered inoperative" militarily speaking. I guess the termination of the field mouse's life might be more properly called, "collateral damage."

Later that same day I went out to check the trap and another vole had had its ticket punched on its last, one way trip to that big beautiful garden in-the-sky. Little by little the plundering of our beautiful garden should diminish as the voles go to heaven one-by-one.

I guess this proves that once again, like Carl from Caddyshack, I'm pretty darn good at thinking like a rodent... so I've got that going for me... which is nice!

And our trolling voles have definitely been pushed back on their heels... which is nice.

Goodnight Grace. ### END ###

What do you think? If anything struck you as “funny” or anything that is particularly “off-putting” I am curious as to what.

Feedback appreciated – rscholz@comcast.net