Moles And Mounds

During the month of October, we noticed a bit of new mole activity. Setting traps and disposing of these critters has always been a yearly activity. In the pastures and hay fields, the mounds made by the critters makes the field rough for the equipment and dulls the cutting blades of the harvest equipment. In the yard and garden, the moles made a mess and destroy rows of plants with their ground movements. In the fields, for the cows and humans alike, twisted ankles are a possibility from holes made by the moles dangerous depressions.

The first busy beaver, errr make that, mole mound was spotted outside our dining room window around the small yard and pollinator hedgerow. But before we could dig the traps out of storage, the cold weather put a damper on the mound makers so we promptly forgot about worrying about the rodents. Now that the temperature has moderated a bit, the suckers are back with a vengeance. We are spotting mole mounds in the garden, around the flowers, in the pastures and around the log landings.

It is seriously time to get those traps out, Mike I am talking to you, and begin to get those creatures under control.

You may ask why I am calling out Mike to do this job, there is a simple explanation. I cannot do it. It’s not that I don’t want to, it comes down to the fact that I, no matter how much I try cannot seem to get the traps set where they actually do any good. I have watched Mike the master over the years.

He makes it look so easy, one shovel worth of sod and you can see the tunnels, clean out the tunnels and insert the set trap gently into convergence of the runway. Cover with a hunk of bark to keep the area dark without filling in the hole with dirt. Flag the spot and come back the next day to retrieve the trap with anticipated mole trapped and deceased. With always the reminder to fill the sod back into the hole for ankles sake. I have tried and tried the steps but not once have I even gotten a mole to come back to the trap and accidentally set it off much less actually catch one. So I will leave it up to the master, but I will be happy to carry the shovel and bucket with the supplies of flags, traps, hunks of bark and setter wires.

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