The Morals and Mysteries of Failing to Catch a Mole

When it first arrived, I rather liked our mole - cute, cuddly, smart. Wind in the Willows did a lot of mole PR. The reality, of course, is quite different. Question is: what to do about it?

Hello you lovely lot. This is my monthly Tale - a story from life in the veg patch - which is free to all subscribers. If you’d like to consider upgrading to a paid subscription, it costs less than a fancy packet of seeds a month and you’ll receive a monthly video (like this), a weekly recipe with PDF recipe card (like this) and plenty more (see here). Don’t worry, there’s still plenty to go at on a free subscription – a monthly recipe, regular newsletter (like this) and these monthly tales (archive here).

Whichever subscription you pick, I’m delighted you’re here. Come into the garden and let me introduce you to the mole…

E H Shepard’s illustration of Mole for Wind in the Willows

When it first arrived, I rather liked the idea of having a mole.

Quiet, polite, intelligent, cuddly. Wind in the Willows did a lot of mole PR. Of course, it’s a total fiction. Just as outlandish as a toad that can drive as it happens. They don’t wear glasses either, moles.

My mole appeared two years ago.

There had been the odd mole hill in the little meadow orchard patch at the bottom of the garden, but then it found its way into the raised beds of the veg patch. How on earth (no pun intended) it managed to get in without machinery I don’t know. The beds are set within gravel paths that have compacted hardcore foundations and the beds themselves are foot high railway sleepers. I picture a mole in a hardhat with a yellow hi-vis and some sort of boring device like they used for the channel tunnel.

Anyway, I was still charmed at first. It did burrow along a row of newly planted beetroot, dislodging them in the process, as if the brightly coloured seedling stems were a sort of cat’s eyes to mark its route more clearly. But no significant harm was done, and it made great content for my cookbook which I was writing at the time.

Then things got out of hand.

At the helm of whatever machinery it was using, hard hat on, it burrowed into all three raised beds in turn and then annexed the cold frame, actually tipping up some of the pots it accidentally surfaced beneath. All of this it did in late spring when the seedlings were newly planted or the seeds just germinated and at their most vulnerable. A bothered root at this tender age is the end for most vegetables. As well as the beetroot, the broad beans, green beans, lettuces, radishes and peas all copped it.

Something had to be done.

I was writing a lot at the time so I would sit amongst the veg beds with my laptop on my knee and a spade, a pair of gloves and a cardboard box at my side. Waiting to pounce. I had this romantic notion that I would capture the mole, de-frock it of its high-vis jacket and hard hat, cast it into the cardboard box and relocate it across the A road at the end of our lane. Surely even a mole couldn’t get across a main road? Thus we would be free.

Clearly this was a fantasy. For a number of reasons. First, I read online that moles can burrow 50 meters in one night, so across the road isn’t going to be far enough. Also, they have amazing hearing so can practically hear you so much as thinking about reaching for a spade, at which point they scarper. And moles can move much faster than you might imagine. But most of all - I am too soft to execute the plan. I did see the ground move a couple of times and it did look like Moley would break cover. But I couldn’t bring myself to either whack it with the spade or attempt to apprehend it. So it got away.

I suppose I should be glad that, two years later, it hasn’t made it into the lawn. Actually, rather awkwardly, it has made a play for our neighbour’s front lawn this year. Which is bold because it means it has tunnelled out of my raised beds, under the driveway, along the ditch and popped up in their front lawn. Quite a long way. On the plus side it’s spending less time in my veg beds, but I do worry that it’s essentially built and extension under their lawn and is properly moving into the area for good.

I google ‘how far do moles travel’ to see what else we, the neighbourhood, are in for and whether this could be the same mole or another faction. Google is un-enlightening, but St Tiggywinkles, the wildlife hospital website, says:

“Molehills are thrown up only once, when the mole first moves in. As this soil is crumbly and weed-free it can easily be removed and used as a top dressing or sterile potting compost, saving some more of the gardening budget. Leave your resident mole alone and soon you will not even know he is there. If you get rid of the mole, you will find a new mole will move into the territory and throw up new mole hills as they dig new tunnels.’

Hmm.

Sarah Raven is in support of the mole as compost maker characterisation too. She says we should embrace the mole hill, using the finely sieved earth as potting compost. But she would wouldn’t she? This from the woman whose Christmas book begins preparations with drying spent allium heads in June ready for spraying. (Actually, I rather admire that.) But, love her as I do, she is not in the realm of the average gardener. She probably has a full-time mole person who politely invites any invading mole to remove itself to another part of country, offering up a relocation package and school fees for any baby moles. But not until it’s made some lovely potting compost of course.

Photo by ahmad kanbar on Unsplash

No. Living with moles is not an option for us mortals.

And frankly, I think of any potting compost as poor compensation for all the disruption. I can share the garden with most wildlife. I was fine, for example, when the mice took chunks out of my first radish harvest. But moles. No. I mention it to a friend who raves about their ‘amazing mole man’. He is, apparently, somewhere between a mole whisperer and a water diviner and can lay traps so strategically that capture is almost guaranteed.  He is also, I’m told, very keen to show you each freshly dispatched mole to demonstrate that a) he caught it and b) that it’s fresh and not just an old corpse hidden in the back of the van to be whipped out if evidence should ever need falsifying.

But still. I can’t bear it. Poor Moley. I imagine the ruddy cheeked and gleeful mole man holding up a dead mole by the throat, silky skin still warm, his little glasses broken and askew as the hard hat slips from his limp head and I can’t do it. I just can’t.

So the mole lives another year in the veg beds. I plant more seedlings to replace the dislodged ones. And have lots of lovely potting compost.