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Entry Date
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Nick Name
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Location
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Friday, August 21, 2026
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Pumpking
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Germany
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Entry 96 of 96 |
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Vole of the day. After my return from vacation, I noticed fresh signs of vole activity in my potato lines (which run across the patch near the squash plants). Yesterday I opened a tunnel, just to find it closed this morning. Yes, they are still in there! So, this afternoon a inserted two traps, and 3 hours later there was a catch. Today I feel like I need to tell something about my way of catching voles. 14 years ago, when I had troubles with voles for the first time, I bought 3 kinds of vole traps, and I read lots of things of how to catch them, how to get them go into the trap. I found out that it could be hard to find a decent bait as long as there is plenty of food for them in the patch, and celery root should be the bait of choice (for at least having a tiny chance of catching one). Hm, I decided to catch them without any bait. I catch them by making use of their own paranoia. There are different types of vole traps, each of them has a trigger (which is meant to be used as a bait holder), and in some cases the trigger works in pull-mode, in some cases the trigger works in push-mode. One needs the push-trigger. So, I simply insert a trap into the vole tunnel, and then I cover the pit (where I opened the tunnel) with some boards and some soil...just slightly. As soon as the vole recongnizes that the end of the tunnel is sort of open, they are scared that small predetors could enter their underground world, and so they push some soil toward the end of the tunnel. They do not see that they push that first small load of soil against the trigger of the trap. Too late...
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