Beech Tree News Network

“The cats drug up a weird-looking mouse.  It’s on the sidewalk,” I said to Garey, one morning after I had narrowly avoided stepping on it.  

“Is it still there?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s on the welcome mat,” I said.

“That’s not a mouse, that’s a vole,” Garey said, with a mere glance out the storm door window.  “Voles have shorter tails and longer noses,” he continued, “and they’re usually digging around after roots, like sweet potatoes.  They’re probably out there in last year’s sweet potato bed, and the cats have found them.  More than likely, you’ll see more.”  (How does he know this stuff?)

Not to be outdone, I Googled Vole.  There was a picture of the weird, recently deceased mouse on my sidewalk, and Garey was right, they do eat root veggies.  It turns out that voles are relatives of lemmings and hamsters (Wikipedia.org).  I filed that bit of information away, so I could tell Garey the next time my cats leave one on the welcome mat.  He’ll be impressed.

Not to criticize God’s work, but I think there are too many different kinds of rodents, and some of the names are confusing.  I remember one of the first times I went to Alabama with Garey, his sister, Charlotte, was talking about methods to get rid of the rats in their basement.  Garey must have noticed that I was turning pale, because he said, “She’s talking about mice.”

In Alabama, they often refer to mice as rats, and they call rats, gopher rats.  I assumed it was a misnomer, but it’s not.  There are rats native to Alabama, Georgia and Florida, called Gopher Rats.  The official name is the Southeastern Pocket Gopher, and they can grow up to 14 inches long (icwdm.org>species>rodents).  I looked at the pictures.  If the cats ever drag one of those up onto my welcome mat, I’m moving.

I’ve had a few run-ins with rats—none as big as a Gopher Rat, thank God!  When I was a kid on Ashes Creek, they would sometimes get into our house.  One night, when I went into the kitchen for a drink, there was a rat pushing up the burner on the stove.  I screamed, which woke the whole house, and possibly the neighborhood.  Dad grabbed his 22 and shot it out of the Christmas tree, where it had taken refuge from my ear-splitting reaction.  Garey never reacts when he hears me scream at a mouse, but he’s never heard my rat scream.  Maybe, I’ll practice it the next time I step on a dead vole on the welcome mat.  

You know, I’m a live-and-let-live person, and I don’t begrudge any creature the right to food, shelter and the pursuit of happiness, if they would just respect my stuff.  However, rodents have chewed holes in or peed upon many things I hold dear.  We live on 150 acres.  We have a barn and sheds and hollow logs.  There is enough food and shelter for everyone.  Still, they insist on living in my closets and ferreting out food that doesn’t belong to them.  I have two inside-outside cats that keep the population thinned down, but one mouse is one mouse too many in my view.

The environmentalists point out that rodents are an important food source for predators, like hawks and foxes.  According to reports from the USDA, rodents are also necessary for seed and spore dispersal, pollination, seed predation, and the modification of plant succession and species composition (digitalcommons.unl.edu). 

I understand the rodents’ benefit to the circle of life.  I just wish they would disperse, pollinate and modify somewhere far away from my house.