Curse you, Voles!

Clint and I were able to get a vinyl fence put in our yard this summer but it was so expensive we weren't able to finish the backyard too.  (sigh) We have to wait until next year I guess.  But our neighbors put sod in their backyard and had some leftover so we bought it off of them and did get a tiny patch of grass in our backyard for Seth to play on.

Unfortunately, we had some visitors to the backyard that also wanted to play in the new grass.  Voles.  Voles are field mice that burrow through your yard, eat all plants in sight, and have babies galore to continue eating up your yard.  They come from the open field behind our house.  I think the plan is for the field to be developed into houses...but who knows when that will be.  So until then, we will have to deal with these little critters.  I curse their existence every day!

If you see a vole, you will probably think it is super cute.  It looks like a little gerbil and I would love the little things if they weren't continually trying to ruin our little patch of grass.  In four days we came across 11 holes across the grass.



These mounds of dirt are how you know you have an active vole burrowing.  They dig through the grass, eating the roots, and push the excess dirt up to the top of the grass.



If you dig the dirt away, which I did so the heavy dirt wouldn't kill the existing grass above, you find these little entrances to their lair below.

Clint and I have tried many things to kill them but they just keep coming back (and probably will until the field behind us is developed.) 

• We have tried to drown them by putting the water hose down the hole.  This led us to discover that they had holes burrowed all the way down to the bottom of our basement window wells. 
• We have run a hose from the exhaust of our car down a hole and let the car run for 45 min in hopes that the carbon monoxide would suffocate them.  (They disappeared from the yard for a couple weeks.  But I think they just ran to another yard for awhile.
• We have had Terminix put poison pellets in the window wells.  (This has been a complete bust.)
• We used rat traps and killed a couple with those.  That is when we feel bad.  Those rat traps aren't very humane and one didn't get caught in the trap but was severely injured and suffering.  Clint had to use the end of a rake to put the poor thing out of its misery and it traumatized us both.

I think we are going to attempt some noise sensors and chicken wire next.  Hopefully they work.