A Vole in One

I know I promised you all a post about our next date, but I'm a little stuck on that one, and since you all must be wasting away without my hilarious personality and captivating stories around, I needed to make a new post. That's a joke of course...


My apologies, for the cheesy title, but I think we've established by now that's just my goofy dorky personality, because I'm the kind of girl that, when my husband points out a beautiful sunset, I call it The Fires of Mordor.




It had definitely been an average, normal, typical, and whatever other synonyms you can think of for that list kind of day. Did not stand out in the least. Lately I have been listening to all the Harry Potter books during the day, so Justin and I were eating our breakfast together and listening to the 3rd Harry Potter book.

Justin and I both had the glazed look in our eyes of someone who was awake, and didn't really want to be. Well, maybe that was mostly me. Justin had the glazed look of a child stuffing pears and Corn Pops into his mouth as fast as he could by the fistful. As we listened to that relaxing British voice reading about the Grim dragging Ron Weasley under the Whomping Willow, I stared lazily out the sliding glass door watching the wind blow leaves and debris into my yard from the back of the house on the other side of the canal and across the street from me.

The only living things in that house that were not staring glassy-eyed into the distance were the cats. Boy and Girl (yes those are their names) were standing with their flat kitty faces mere centimeters from the glass watching those leaves and bits of trash go by like it was the coolest TV they had ever seen. As I watched them, I saw Girl get into her pouncing position. I observed bemusedly, waiting to see if she would smack into the door. And she did. As Girl proved me a better seer than Professor Trelawney, I saw the furry grey leaf she had attempted to pounce on skitter off into the grass.

"Wait." I said to myself (I frequently think out loud and talk to myself) "Leaves aren't furry." I crossed the kitchen and stood behind the cats and peered through the blinds at the quivering ball of fluff.
"A mouse? A mouse. *gasp* A mouse! Ohmygoshamouse!!!" I stood there above my cats with my face pressed up against the glass staring at that cute little thing that invoked shudders of disgust mingled with minor bouts of  terror. I was so excited because something unusual was happening, that I was positively shaking with anticipation and panic about what I was going to do about that rodent. (I had the experience once before of knowing there was a mouse in my previous house, but I never saw it, and was never successful in catching it with any of my traps. I think it died on its own somewhere under the kitchen; there was an odd smell every time I turned on the oven.) So I was excited to exact my revenge on this poor little creature in proxy of my being denied my chance to prove myself with the other elusive mouse who nibbled every single piece of my strawberry gum.

This is the fuzzy grey leaf, sorry for the poor quality, I took this with my phone through the window.

The brownish grey puffball sat at the edge of the tarp that covered my fallen bike in a small sort of canal that it had dug into the top of the grass, like a tunnel, but it was only covered by the tops of the grass. At the beginning of winter my bike had been upright and covered by the tarp. But staying true to Idaho in general and East Idaho to be specific, in the next windstorm which was shortly followed by a massive dumping of snow the bike had been knocked over and frozen into place where it stayed for the next 3 months.

Just the day before seeing the mouse, the last bit of snow hindering the revival of my bike and the tarp, had finally melted and I had intended to fix the issue, but was procrastinating and worrying about the nastiness I might find. Little did I know....a family of voles had made their winter nest under the tarp.

When I saw the creepy thing slink away down the community fence towards my neighbors' yards, I decided it was safe to go and destroy its home. I must have looked utterly ridiculous. With last night's make up smeared across my face, shorts from the morning's work out, and a bright red sweatshirt Justin had smeared his runny nose on that I pulled out of the dirty laundry you would think I looked silly enough. Not so. I pulled on the rubber rain-boots I keep by the back door even though I had not ever needed to use them until now. Armed with a broom and my biggest tupper-ware, I ventured outside into the unknown wild. Pulling the door mostly shut, I left it cracked with the screen door to cover it so I could listen and make sure Justin didn't shove too much food in at once and choke.

As I started my destruction of the little mousy mansion, I decided to begin with a nice beating. So I held the broom by the very end of the handle high over my head, and began whacking the whole thing all over. Or at least I would have. If I hadn't realized how stupid it was of me to do that, when all I was hitting was my bike. So I decided to do this differently. I'd begin by blowing the roof off. Still using the very end of the broom, I raised the tarp on one side. My theory was that I would just fold it all into the middle then push the whole mess into the opposite corner of the yard.

My first push was fine. I discovered more tunnels in the grass, and the smell of rotting compost.I saw an unfinished tunnel that doubled back into a loop and looked utterly useless.

This is the mousy mansion, after everything was said and done, but you can see the tunnels.

The OCD person inside of me shuddered at the chaos of the floor plan the vole had carved into the sod. At this point I almost had half of the tarp picked up. I shoved up another piece of tarp and a brown ball darted out of the slimy grass, and ran straight at me!

Suddenly those rain-boots didn't seem like adequate protection against the rabid creature charging me. I let out a hysterical, high pitched shriek, kicked both legs up and somehow ended up on the other side of the bike. I heard the echo of my scream bouncing around off the backs of my house and my neighbors'. Behind a distant fence, I could hear a dog yapping incessantly in answer to my yelp. Standing there, in my outrageous appearance, legs and boots splattered with bits of wet grass and mud, unkempt curly hair standing on top of my head, broom held out defensively, I suddenly realized how utterly ridiculous I was being, and laughed appreciatively.

You see that really slimy looking spot right in the middle? That's where the vole was sleeping, you can see its all smooth and nesty looking. Yuck.

Already beginning to form descriptions for my future blog post in my head, I attacked my foe with much more confidence. This time, I knew where he was. And I knew where he would probably go, and I knew where I wanted him to go. I started by smacking the tarp next to him, herding him out towards the open grass and away from the AC that had accumulated windblown trash behind it. When I figured he was either where I wanted him to be or smashed, I threw off the rest of the tarp all at once.

He was right where I wanted him to be, but he was faster than I had anticipated! I began swinging my broom after him trying to pin him to the ground in a frenzy. I managed to get my broom on top of him a couple times, but those darn tunnels always seemed to be right where he needed, and my broom couldn't stop him there. But he thought he could lay low and hide in those tunnels. He didn't know that I am a human and I'm smarter than the average woodland vole! (I sure hope I am.) I herded him in his tunnels to an area where the tunnels were not finished and suddenly became shallow. Shallow enough for me to finally bring that broom down in one final graceful arc that landed with a thwack of plastic on slimy squishy organic material.

I didn't smash it. But it didn't move even though it could have easily pushed it's way through the brush of my broom. I had been hoping I could smash it and not have to worry about it suffering, but all I had was a broom. I whipped out my tupper-ware, and crouched down low. The force of my swat and continued pressure with the broom had pushed the little creature into the mud, and it was barely getting itself unstuck before I slammed the tupper-ware on top of it, then slid the lid underneath.

And that is the story of how I caught my first little varmint.