More About Voles (Maybe More than You Want to Know)

– Posted in: Pests, Plagues, and Varmints, Recommended Links
4 comments

This just came to my attention. Barbara Damrosch dishes the dirt about these rodents in A Game of Whack-a-Vole:

No sentiment please. No matter how reverent we gardeners may feel about the web of life there are times when the list of predators must include you.

We’re on the same page, Barbara.

About the Author

Kathy Purdy is a colchicum evangelist, converting unsuspecting gardeners into colchicophiles. She gardens in rural upstate NY, which used to be USDA Hardiness Zone 4 but is now Zone 5. Kathy’s been writing since 4th grade, gardening since high school, and blogging since 2002. Find her on Instagram as kopurdy.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

~Albert Camus in Albert Camus quotations

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redbrick December 3, 2006, 8:56 am

Don, that’s a vole other story! (Ahem, couldn’t help myself) BTW, if chickens can catch them, small furry meat is definitely on the menu. You should see them when they find a mouse nest full of “pinkies”.

Don December 2, 2006, 12:28 am

Did your cat hunt voles a lot, and then started throwing up and losing weight? Maybe it had volemia. (I know, I know… bad joke).

Kathy Purdy December 1, 2006, 10:41 am

We don’t have a dog but we do have chickens. I don’t have much to do with the chickens myself, but I haven’t heard any reports of chicken-eating voles. They have so much room to forage it is possible no one’s observed them. We used to have a wonderful hunting cat, but she died young of mysterious causes.

El December 1, 2006, 10:33 am

My chickens LOVE voles. My dogs do, too.

I can’t say they do much damage here with our heavy clay soil, but we have seen them…and unfortunately for them, they’ve been seen. Ugh.