Volume 1 number 1, January 1999 Battle of the Vole A DECLARATION OF WAR was made only weeks after my wife, Melissa, and I moved into our freshly insulated and recently vapor-barriered home, once an old rock crushing mill. As soon as heat had been established we noticed that we were not the only tenants to call the mill home. At first the furry little critters were entertaining and hey, they were so small, what harm could they do? Melissa was quick to point out that the number of black magic marker circles denoting frost spots on the vapor barrier was growing proportionately to the number of vole sightings. Any of you who have built your own home knows that anything or anyone that makes more work with Tremco neccessary (a substance better known as "black death") automatically becomes household enemy number one. THE GOAL started out simple: return our home to normal, or at least return it to an atmosphere other than that of a walk-in ant farm, and to do it humanely, if possible. We tried simply asking them to leave but as that failed we decided on live traps. No reason the dogs shouldn’t have a little fun, too. THE FIRST BATTLE started well with one vole caught within hours. However, because I have a perverse sense of humor and the dogs were excited over our first victory, I talked my wife into letting it go inside the house. The thinking here was that maybe we could instill the catlike mousekilling instinct into the dogs. Dogs are slow. The vole moved in under the refrigerator and the dogs maintained their posts with noses wedged under the fridge door for the rest of the night. When I checked the trap the next day I found only vole dropppings, a sure sign that my offering had been appreciated but my hospitality was not necessary. We continued feeding the voles for a while with only one additional capture, credited to a friend who spotted it going into the trap, enabling me to win a finger wrestle for the trap door with the doomed soldier. As a result of this capture I learned that voles have weak hearts. I apparently left the vole in the warmth of home for too long before its release into 20 below. It made it about five feet before keeling over. I imagine the two huskies bearing down on it didn’t help any. After all modifications that could be made to the trap had proven useless against our little antagonists we finally had to toss the trap in order to conserve peanut butter. FALL BACK AND RE-GROUP: the obvious next step was to switch to dead traps or poison but we did entertain some suggestions for a new battle plan: 1. Smack them with hammer as they cross the studs. Discarded due to necessity of Tremco after cleaning up the mess. 2. Shoot them with .22 rifle. Dicarded due to proximity of neighbors and necessity of Tremco repairs after clean-up. 3. Shoot them with .410 shotgun. Discarded due to necessity of Tremco after clean-up. 4. Shoot them with nailgun. Failed due to length of time for compressor to build enough pressure for an accurate shot. 5. Use sticky tape and bait to catch them, then throw them into wood stove. Sounds cool but danged if I can find it at Freddie’s and I’m not sure that voles are good for Monitors. 6. Trap them with a bowl against the insulation, cut out the vapor barrier and slide in a piece of cardboard to trap them in the bowl. Tried and failed due to the burrowing ability of the enemy. 7. Buy a cat. Yeah, right. 8. Buy a ferret. Discarded due to high replacement costs. 9. Switch bait to psychedelic mushrooms. Anyone have any they’re willing to part with for vole bait? THE SECOND BATTLE found us using regular "kill ‘em all" mouse traps. We bought and installed only two so we could see how effective they were before cutting too many more holes in the vapor barrier. The first day’s results had me thinking more of shotguns than peanut butter. Somehow they managed to eat all the bait off the triggers without setting off the traps. Day two and a minor modification resulting in a sore finger found us with one casulty and one debaited trap. Day three, one more modification and placement of the traps immediately next to each other gave us one more victory. Days four, five, and six debaited…got any shells? | ||
 | | |
