The Season of the Voles

I don't know if the season has anything to do with it -- and if so, whether it is a season that affects the cats and makes them want to hunt or one that affects the voles and makes them more visible and vulnerable -- but for the past couple of weeks, Cassidy has been bringing voles into the house again. Many -- most? -- she brings in and lets loose. If we see them in time, we try to capture them safely and take them back outside away from the immediate environs of the house.

This afternoon I saw one at the top of the stairs to the basement and tried to capture it. At one point it climbed up on my shoe, raised up on his haunches and looked at me. In its own little way, it was quite cute. Then it trotted off down the stairs to the basement, where Tom and I eventually trapped it in a box and took it outside. 

You may wonder why we don't just dispatch them all, and it is true that they are so prolific that killing the ones the cats bring it will not have a serious impact of the world -- or even local -- vole population. On the other hand, they are a part of the circle of life out there, aerating the ground and distributing nutrients through the soil, according to what I have read. Plus they provide nourishment for a number of predators, and the cats certainly do not need the food. If they did, they would eat them all and not just let them loose to roam the house.

Sometimes we only find voles after they are already caught in the sticky traps, from which there is no saving them. 

The other day I was outside talking to my mother on the phone when I saw Cassidy trotting toward the cat door with a vole in her jaws. I shooed her away, but she brought it in later. Or perhaps it was a new one. It was pretty wounded but not yet dead. I had to put it out of its misery.

Sometimes, however, the cats do devour them, or they devour something...

This morning I was awakened by a noise in the library, which is on the other side of my bedroom wall.

"I hope that's not a mouse in a sticky trap," I told myself and tried to go back to sleep. But the noise got louder and I had to go check. Sure enough, there was a big fat vole thoroughly stuck to the goo. I got rid of that and then, on my way to make my morning coffee, saw a mouse or vole kidney (or other organ) lying on the rug under the dining table. No smears of blood, no other marks, just the tell-tale rodent organ. So there had been another something for the cats in the night.

According to the Turf Tip people at Purdue, fall and late winter is the best time to try to trap them, so maybe the cats are onto something. Just wish they would do their dining outdoors.