Garden: Pesky Mole

We have a population of moles in the garden.  Two moles.  One at the back in the orchard area which I suspect we share with our neighbour Emile, and the annoying one at the front.  Annoying, because part of the tunnel network incorporates my potager; and having to replant kale and lettuces because they have been upended is frustrating, but not the end of the world.  Unless it is thirty degrees and I don't notice in which case it can be terminal.

The tunnels make my veg garden more free draining which is fine in the winter, when little is growing, but a pain when I'm having to water by hand, only to watch the water flooding away only to run out of hole at the bottom of the slope.  And then there are the numerous occasions when I've given it large with the trowel only to disappear up to my elbow and end up with my nose at slug level.  Try planting neat rows of anything when you have to avoid the diagonal route chosen by the resident mole.  Not that neat rows will stay neat for long.

I can always tell when the cats have successfully dispatched a mole as a couple of disruption free days are then followed by huge excavations as a new tenant has found the current layout not at all to its liking and has decided to redesign and extend.

Captured by Tortilla.  Moles are on of the few things that the cats will not eat - shrews are another.

From time to time I set a live trap but without success.

Indeed for a while the trap was converted into a live mouse trap when we had a problem with mice getting under the floors before the house was finished.  As this is a mole trap, it has a flappy door at each end, allowing the mole to get in but then it is unable to get out again as the doors only fold in.

Naturally this didn't stop the mice who quickly solved the puzzle and happily pulled the flap towards them and continued on their way.  In the end we had to set up a camera next to the trap and would sit and watch on Mouse TV.  Once the mouse was in, we had a few seconds to whip up the loose plank and lift the trap out from under the floor, remembering of course to put a hand (in a glove) over each end.  We walked miles with that trap, but the swine/s kept coming back.  In the end it had to be taken for a drive ...

But back to the mole.  Up to now, the beast has been a nuisance rather than anything else. Maybe vegetable growing has been tougher in what were already tough conditions, and I've turned my ankle plenty of times as a nice grass path has suddenly developed a dirty great hole.  But this month my sympathies changed.  Our plot was nothing but a topsoil-stripped sea of subsoil clay mud or concrete, depending on the weather when we moved in four years ago. Nothing was growing and it is only this year that some of the trees and shrubs have begun to look happy.  We've had our first figs, apples, pears and plums this year and shrubs have flowered for the first time.

Particularly spectacular has been a variegated buddleia Davidii Harlequin.  For three years it sulked in its clay-bound hole and then this spring it leaped into life, tripled in height and from mid summer was covered in rich pinky-purple flowers and masses of butterflies.

And then the mole discovered the nice worm-filled root ball and proceeded to excavate the entire area.  Typically this coincided with a period of hot and dry weather and a period of inattention  on my part.  By the time I noticed the first leaved starting to droop it was probably too late.  Copious daily watering and some very gentle forking around the roots to try and stop them totally drying out was not enough and within a week the shrub looked like this.

I shall cut all the dead growth down and hope that the cooler autumnal weather and expanding clay soil may give rise to some new growth from the base.  

The cats were given a stern talking to about their responsibilities - they are NOT pets, but here to earn their keep - and the mole trap re-set, without much expectation. 

I found a good run right at the corner of the aubergine/pepper/chilli bed where the trap could be dropped into the tunnel with minimal disruption and handling, covered it with a large stone and wrote myself a reminder to check the trap at least three times a day.

I always try to garden in balance with nature, but the mole has tried my patience!  But I set live traps for a reason - capture and relocate to a distant field - and I check them regularly to minimise the stress to any captured animal.  I like moles.  I just don't like the disruption, not to mention that we live and garden on a minimal budget so cannot just go out and buy a replacement buddleia.  Needless to say I was initially delighted to find a mole in my trap on just the second day and then horrified to find it was dead.  If I'd wanted to kill the thing I'd have set a scissor trap which at least would have been quicker than the inevitable suffering of being stuck in a small plastic tube.

A week later and there is as yet no sign of a new tenant moving into the vacated territory, but if one does, I'm not at all sure I'll be setting a so-called live trap again.