Moles

Above: a fine set of mole hills, streaming across the paddock. Moles are small burrowing mammals which live off a diet of earthworms and other soil-dwelling invertebrates. Black velvet-like coat, spade-shaped front limbs and small pink snout.



Above: I was recently browsing through parish vermin-payments from the eighteenth-century (privately collected and printed in the 1930s) and came across a set of accounts related to mole catchers. As you can see, the payments vary wildly. The payments represent a considerable expenditure on controlling a creature that does mainly cosmetic damage.



Above: moles in the United Kingdom have no legal protection and can be persecuted at will. Personally I would prefer to put up with the molehills than have these creatures exterminated. However I ought to declare that the main lawn was laid on the bricks of the old Victorian farmyard, and so the soil is never undermined by moles or anything else.

In A Fatal Inversion by Ruth Rendall (writing as Barbara Vine) a mole-catcher who calls at Wyvis Hall is tipped into the lake.



Above: illustration by EH Shepherd from The Wind In The Willows. This book is probably responsible for my over-sympathetic attitude towards moles. This is a photograph (taken by me) of a picture on Google images - we do have two copies of the book in the house, but despite searching I can't find either of them.

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_in_the_Willows