Vole Tales

Story #1-
I bet most of you are wondering what a vole is. I did too before I moved to a remote village just west of Salt Lake City.

Well, a vole is a rodent that looks much like a mouse. However, when you are looking at it, you notice it carries some unmouse-like (I just made up a word) characteristics. For example, its fur is bushier and seems a little more full and coarser than mouse fur. Also, it eyes are different and more puppy dog looking. It tends to run a little bigger than your typical mouse too.





Now, I know you are going, "Awwww.... how cute!"

"The vole" is commonly found stuck in our window wells. Sometimes we catch them before death, sometimes after. At their last attempt to get into my house, they chew through the screens and make big holes.

They also dig tunnels under your lawn that erodes away and kills the grass just above it in a snakelike pattern. They are a nuisance. I have also heard of them going after people in an angry fashion when being retrieved from the window wells.

Anyway....

Late this summer, I was on my way up to my room to take a bath. I heard Tye and Erika announcing that there was a vole in the window well....alive.

Since my husband works round the clock, Tye has developed some serious man-skills.

"Don't worry mom, I got it." he said to me as he went for the shovel to lift it out.

In the past, we have put them in a box and taken them up the street to let them go in the field. So, I imagined that is what he would do.

I ran my bath and got in. I was just relaxing and sinking in when I heard some commotion coming from downstairs.

It didn't sound emergent so I decided to continue to relax which is what I was doing when the kids barged in the bathroom.

"Mom!" Tye said as he hovered over me holding a white towel. I looked up.

There was something in the towel.

"Mom, help us!" he yelled.

Erika sobbed.

I sat up just enough to peer up and over into the towel.

Wrapped carefully in the towel, was a very wet, half-dead looking vole. Its eyes were close, its mouth open and was gasping for little vole breaths.

"What in the heck?" I demanded

Tye responded as quickly as he could, "It's not my fault! Erika wanted to bring it in the house for a pet. I told her that you said they were dirty and had diseases so...she gave it a bath in the kitchen sink and now, look, it's dying!"

"I just used warm water and soap like what you tell me kills germs on my hands mama" Erika said.

The kids were clearly distraught. I could handle cuts, stitches, broken bones, anything but something dying really got to me, vole or otherwise.

I jumped out of the tub and threw on the first thing I saw. My hair was dripping. I began to panic. I was not going to touch the thing so I grabbed Erika's fabric covered polka dot decorative hatbox (which I loved) and put the vole inside.

As we rushed down the stairs Erika was sobbing and cried,"I killed her. I killer Lolly Elizabeth GoodGirl Jordan!"

This was lovely, we had already named, loved and killed a pet. How long was I in that tub?

I made the kids stay in the house and I told them that I was taking the vole to the neighbors house and she would get it to the vet as soon as possible. My neighbor responded quickly and acted like she drove off with the towel wrapped vole as I snuck around the side of her house with it.

The vole was still gasping for breath and it upset me very much to watch. I feel bad when I kill a fly. I knew I had to do something to end its suffering.

I laid the hatbox on the grass, ran to the hose, turned it on, and threw it in the hatbox. It started to fill up with water. Soon the water filled up over the vole, or, excuse me, over Lolly.

I fell to my knees and sobbed. I cried so hard I could hardly breath. I was devastated. I was terrible. I just...ended a ...life! It was almost more than I could take. I laid next to it in the grass crying when I heard somebody... burst out in the most hideous laughter ever! I turned around, my neighbor and her husband were laughing out of their minds.

They walked me to the patio furniture to have a seat and debrief me of my traumatic experience. All the while they were snickering and laughing at me. It was just a vole.

I pulled myself together, wiped the mascara off from under my eyes and walked back to my house to cheerfully report that Lolly made it to the vet and was resuscitated and doing fine. She would be staying there until they could acclimate her back into the wild with her family where she would live happily ever after.

The End.

Stay tuned next week for more Vole Tales...

http://www.talkingpets.org/?mid=29455913

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