permaculture

[Rain Tenaqiya <raincascadia@yahoo.com>]

As evidence of what Toby said about relocating rodents, I have a personal 
story to share.  When I first moved to my homesite two years ago, I had a 
very rough spiritual and emotional time trying to deal with mice and voles 
that were eating my house and food plants.  I had trapped gophers before, but 
I had never dealt with such high numbers of rodent competitors.  The first 
time I caught a vole pair (in killing traps), I discovered that they had cute 
little babies (voles are basically just hamsters), which were wandering 
around looking for mommy and daddy.  I caught them with my hands and put them 
in a jar for safe relocation.  I took them to a spot with lots of vole 
tunnels that I thought they would enjoy.  I knew that the existing voles 
might not like the newcomers, but I was optimistic that they might adopt the 
little guys.  As soon as I put them out, the babies started squeaking and 
wandering around, resulting in an eerie response from tons of invisible 
voles, all around
 me.  I watched to see what would happen.  An adult vole came searching for 
the babies, found one, bit it, and left it bleeding.  I think the same 
happened to at least one more.  They would have been better off if I had just 
dropped them in a bucket of water.  I don't know how the existing voles would 
have responded to an adult.
   
  Rain

       
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