Moles ... and more moles!

[The Mouse]

You're the Mole-man

Make that Mole-woman!

It's Old Herby's fault for calling me "Bert", isn't it? Don't ask - it goes back to when I changed my username on the forum a few years ago. So long ago that I can barely remember the reason myself, but it always makes me laugh when he calles me that.

[Ricard with an H]

Make that Mole-woman!

Well, you should know, i'm not embarrassed about getting this wrong in this case. At least I wasn't accused of being sexist, i'm the least sexist man you'll ever meet or be acquainted with.

I raised three daughters, my wife was a woman and the dog was a lady-dog, you-go-and-figure where I stood during disagreements.

The dog gave me the finger when I told her to get-off the settee, my wife once shifted 12 ton of hardcore from the roadside in a wheelbarrow because I became disabled.

Respect Eh.

[The Mouse]

I've haven't got them all yet - just checked, and there are still signs of life in the tunnels.

[The Mouse]

Update - another in trap this morning, making a total of six, so far.


4.45pm update: definitely haven't got all of them yet.

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Bert, the local mole-catchers round this way, charge £35.00 per mole caught. So you should treat yourself to something nice, for the money saved.

[The Mouse]

Further update. I might have been wrong when I last said that there were still some down there. I monitor things by lightly 'blocking' certain tunnels with soil, so I can see at a glance if something goes through afterwards. The tunnel I blocked yesterday was re-opened, but thinking about it the new opening is a bit small for a mole, and not as round and smooth as they usually leave it, so I think that maybe just a mouse or a vole is using the tunnel right now.

Time will tell. I'll keep you updated.

Herby: I've splashed out on a couple of new mole traps this week - does that count as treating myself to something nice?

[The Mouse]

No. 7 was in trap this morning.

That's an average of one a day over the last week, all caught within two yards of each other.
Don't know about a family of moles - I'm beginning to think there might be a whole village under my garden!!!

[peter]

You'll have enough to make a waistcoat soon!

[Ricard with an H]

No. 7 was in trap this morning.

Nothing short of amazing, will you be writing a compendium about your experiences and method ?

Did you do anything different that you're aware of that folks like me who have never caught a mole even using text-book methods.

Do you wear 'Marigolds' and use a re-breather when setting traps. No kidding, I once read a view that the mole can smell what we breath out and that you shouldn't use traps until they have been in earth for a few weeks. My traps have always been kept in a bag with soil on them.

Come-on Mrs Mouse, spill the beans.

[The Mouse]

Hi Richard.
I'm putting my luck down to the fact that these - most of them anyway - were youngsters. I reckon that their slightly smaller size means that they are more likely to reach the point of no return in a trap without feeling 'restricted' by it in the way that a large adult might. That plus the fact that they haven't learnt to be as wary as the adults.

Apart from that, my advice is to tear up the so-called 'how to' books. The things you mentioned are things that I had read and tried to follow (not very successfully) in the past, but this time I just went for it.

I bought two new traps this week, and remembering what I'd read before, the first thing I did was dig a hole in the garden and stick them in it to try to make their smell less noticable. However, after less than half an hour I thought 'blow this, I can't be bothered to wait', and I pulled them out and set them. Guess what - the mole I got yesterday was in one of those brand new traps!

I am setting the traps in the veg patch, not in lawn, and the tunnels I'm targetting are not very deep at all. As long as I can open up a suitably-sized hole where I can sit the trap so that it lines up nicely with both parts of the tunnel, I don't care if the top of the tunnel is only an inch underground. I am then putting a terracotta plantpot over hole and trap, with its drainage hole covered to block out the light.

I try to remember to wear my filthy old gardening gloves to cut down my scent, but don't always remember. To be honest, as I am down at that level weeding so often, frequently exposing their tunnels by accident, I would have thought that they would be used to my scent anyway.

What more can I say, other than it has worked this time.

I still think there might be more down there - it will probably turn out to be supermole, the one with the brains that will outwit me for ever more.
Watch this space!

[Ricard with an H]

Thank you for being so candid.

Right now I have moles taking advantage of all the hard work I did with the planting trench for sea buckthorn. I removed most of the stone, introduced organic nutrient so the worm population increased not the little beggers are swimming along my sea buckthorn trench and no doubt undermining the roots system.

No way I could set traps in amongst those sea buckthorn planted 3 to the metre or closer.

I'm going to have to go back to those electronic things.

[The Mouse]

No 8 - an escapee!
I knew I shouldn't have used my one remaining tunnel trap. The other went in the bin a couple of years back when it failed to kill a large mole. Now the same thing has just happened with my other tunnel trap. The mole must only have been in the trap a minute or two when I found it. I could see it was going to free itself before I could kill it, so I rushed down the garden, letting it drop into the field as it got free. I just hope it burrows away from the garden. Foolish optimist, that's me!

Would you believe that I had only removed all the scissor traps from the back garden minutes earlier? Having not caught anything for over a week, I had decided to move them to the front garden instead because there's a mole problem amongst the strawberries. Having set them all, I found another run and decided to go back for the tunnel trap too. In the five or ten minutes since I had moved those scissor traps, something - presumably the mole that got 'stuck' in the tunnel trap - had run through every one of the tunnels where the scissors traps had been

[The Mouse]

Nos. 9, 10 and 11!

Went of Thursday evening, leaving five traps set, four in front of the house and one at the back. Came back this afternoon to find two moles in traps at the front (one baby) and one adult out the back where I had caught the previous 8!

I know this might be getting boring, but I will keep updating for a week or two, just in case anyone is interested in how many moles there can be in just one garden.

[Ricard with an H]

Please don't consider your updates to be boring, I find it fascinating that you've blown some facts that were written in stone right out of the water.

Or, you've uncovered some sort of super-breeders that had to adjust their lonely environment to one of companionship.

Some stuff I read claims that a single mole can be responsible for the diggings over half a football-pitch.

The moles that are running up and down the sea buckthorn planting trench are getting a daily flooding with water plus the electronic gadgets. I can't trap them because I would cause even more root disturbance. The reason moles are in the planting trench is because I cleared it of most of the stone then turned it into a nice worm breeding habitat.

Mole-heaven.

Keep it come Mrs Mole.

[oldherbaceous]

Well done Bert, imagine the damage that would have been caused by now, if you hadn't caught them.

I'm still catching other peoples, but still can't manage to catch my own, they just keep back filling the traps. I have been told there is a special trap (French i think) that has two long bars that go further down the tunnel, but they are meant to be prone to not killing them, what i wouldn't be very happy about.