Postscript
Moles and voles
P. J. Kavanagh
Great matters can be trivialised, but it is not at all certain that small matters are trivial. John Betjeman remarked that what people really remember, even when involved in large events, is a dog barking in the next street, and as a defence of the potency of the small detail that sounds true.
Nevertheless, when I wrote in this col- umn about our own invasion by moles (or voles) there were those in the family who said I was going too far; going, in fact, too far in the direction of the twee. Worse; in the mention of a 'cricket pitch' (which the moles or voles had invaded) there might be thought a hint of gentrified rural preten- sion that would irritate, as well as bore, the harried urbanite. Well, one has to take one's chance on things like that, but I had a suspicion that the mole problem might prove as interesting to some others as it was to me.
For new readers I ought to explain that we have an unpromising patch of stony ground which over the years I have tried to improve so that we can practise cricket on it. It has improved, a little, but this year for the first time it was criss-crossed by mole- or vole-runs and became a spongy, corru- gated, stone-strewn mess. I asked if any reader could suggest how to keep the creatures away.
Nothing I have written about has brought so large a correspondence. Apart from the letters the editor printed, there was a pile of private ones. I was right and the scoffers were wrong. Moles (or voles) arouse strong passions and their habits give rise to much human ingenuity.
I was told that empty bottles, planted in the ground, caused an Aeolian Harp effect, when the wind passed over their open necks, which was most displeasing to moles. The trouble with this (and the trouble with 'the cricket pitch'), is that the soil on it is nowhere more than a few inches deep, so that the quarter-buried bottles made the place look like the morning after of a drunken al fresco party. Brambles and briar branches, buried in the runs, was another remedy. But the creatures seemed to enjoy the tickling of these and threw them to the surface so that the bottles took on the aspect of dud shells sticking up from barbed-wire in No Man's Land. Then mothballs were placed in the runs be- cause your mole, it was said, has a delicate nose.
Nothing seemed to work, the hourly corrugations continued. I began to have sympathy with the fierce correspondent who suggested the only way was to sit there, shot-gun across knees, and let go with both barrels as soon as one emerged. He was of the opinion that no fate was too bad for the infernal animals. (In fact I never saw one, which is why the moles or voles question is unanswered. A painter friend, sunbathing on that patch during the summer, swears he saw pink, spade-like paws and a velvet coat. But I suspect him of hypertrophy of the visual imagination.) The local remedy is the planting of caper spurge. It is used in cottage gardens to discourage all burrowing mammals. We had some so I transplanted several of them along the edge of the pitch and there they stand now, like small green pylons, incon- gruous, and bending in the wind. But no more moles, or voles.
The trouble is, there is no way of telling which remedy did the trick. They were all tried simultaneously, unscientifically, be- cause the moles had to go. And now, months later, even the Telly is interested. Were they — the question came down the line this morning, urgent, from Television Centre — moles or voles? Apparently Tony Soper is making one of his nature programmes and might like to film them. The Centre sounded disappointed they had gone: they had considered the possibility of filming each separate solution, briars, bot- tles, mothballs and so on, to see which worked. A venture that surely would have required an increase in the licence fee to finance it. But — moles or voles — they have departed to the field next door and have lost their chance of national cele- brity.
If it was not just the change of season it was possibly the mothballs that did it, because if I were a mole (or vole) I would dislike stubbing my nose on a mothball in the dark. However I strongly suspect, on no evidence, that it was the caper spurge. I am told this is a Conservative magazine (which seems a pity, to be so closely tied) but that suggests there will be readers comforted to learn that old ways are best.
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