Return of the Voles

The voles have invaded Desiree's flower garden again.

Though they are often mistaken for mice, they live very different lives. While mice are quick to invade and take advantage of the luxuries of our homes, voles are creatures of meadows, fields, and forest edges. They spend most of their time hidden beneath dense grasses, scuttling through narrow runways they weave through the vegetation and retreating to shallow burrows where they nest and store food. Their diet consists mainly of grasses, roots, seeds, bulbs, and the bark of young trees, which can make them unwelcome visitors in gardens and orchards. Although a vole may occasionally wander into a garage or shed by accident, they rarely take up residence inside houses.

If you spot a small rodent scampering across your kitchen floor, it's almost certainly a mouse rather than a vole. A vole is easy to recognize by its compact body, blunt nose, tiny ears that nearly disappear into its fur, and its short tail, which is only about a third the length of its body.

Yesterday, I live-trapped two voles from the garden and carted them down the road for release in the place we nicknamed Voleville in honor of previous releases there. I'm sharing two photographs of one of the captured voles. The second includes a Cold Smoke beer for an accurate reference of its size.

A Trapped Vole

Vole Next to a Cold Smoke Beer

—Mitchell Hegman