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Voles

© Carla Goodloe

They are found worldwide. They can destroy your garden in less than a week if there are enough of them and your garden small enough. Also known as meadow or field mouse.

Photo provided by Washington State University. They are like mice only bigger and they live in fields and meadows. You can have meadow voles and pine voles. Meadow voles have furry ears and are usually brown with silver underbellies. Their tails are longer than their hind legs. Pine voles ears are nearly unseen and are usually reddish in color. Their tails are shorter than their hind legs.

You can always use D-con poison but do you want that leaking into the groundwater via rain runoff? It is a quick fix however if you aren't squeamish with killing them.

I bought one of those pest control sonar things that you plug into the wall. It's in the house and it is said to keep insects and rodents away. It says it may take up to 2 months to have any effect. By then I won't need it. My garden will be gone!

I found an article on gophers and moles that says if you put human urine in a hose-end sprayer, and spray your yard, it will keep rodents and other wildlife such as deer and rabbits, away. Well, I tried this method and I haven't seen any damage this year. Last year, I lost all the beans. Even the cats that use the yard as a litter box quit coming around.

I also read that human hair will work so I tossed some of my hair out there after one of my hair cutting binges. I've cut my own hair since 1995. I wish I had saved all of that hair over the years just for this purpose.

Hopefully these methods will work instead of killing the animals or using chemical means.

Some sites to visit on this rodent are:

http://gaston.ces.state.nc.us/staff/vole... http://axp.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES... http://www.cahe.wsu.edu/~hp31/vole.htm

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