Raggedy Hobo Cat and the voles

www.thelittleorchardcompany.co.uk

A little wood vole

Those of you that know me personally will realise that I'm unhealthily preoccupied with voles. When we first owned the land that is now our orchard, we took a photo of this little chap sunbathing and warbled on among ourselves about how cute he was and what a joy it was to have such wonderful wildlife in our field.

A pair of softy nitwits!

What a pair of softy nitwits!
Voles are a major pest of apple orchards but we were so green that we had no idea. It's not the sort of thing that a pair of IT contractors would be likely to know is it?
Several years later, and marginally wiser, I now fantasise all the time about how best to kill voles (what's happened to me? I used to be so nice). Well, maybe not to kill all of them outright, but to bring about some kind of equilibrium where their numbers are kept in check. Our current scheme involves installing roosting posts to attract kestrels; the only problem is that there are so many buzzards around that they're putting off the smaller birds of prey. Bother. We could set traps, but we have 500 trees, so that's not a very practical solution. And even I fall short of one of the documented methods of vole control, which is to leave an un-mowed strip of grass between each row of trees; when the voles get used to hiding out in the long growth, mow it! And the voles too! That's a step too far for a softy nitwit.

Tony doing manly stuff

If you just drew a sharp breath, appalled at the cruelty, don't worry too much, the voles outwit us most of the time. For example, Tony is a manly fellow, strongly built and not scared of very much; last summer, while working in the orchard I jumped out of my skin when he squealed like a little girl, flailed his arms wildly and ran off down the hill. I thought he'd maybe stumbled across a swarm of bees and been soundly stung; I prepared myself to administer first aid. But no, apparently a vole had jumped out at him in a menacing way and tried to eat him! Yup, OK, Tony!

Even when we accidentally run our tractor at speed towards an out-in-the-open vole, it just seems to ride the tractor's bow wave and then jump off to one side. Maybe we're unintentionally nurturing a breed of gnarly, tricky, surfer dude voles with malign carnivorous tendencies!

Raggedy Hobo Cat

So, within the last few months, we've been delighted to see a cat in the orchard. He (she?) is there all the time doing catty things; pouncing on stuff, digging the voles out of their burrows, and chasing bunnies. He’s a little the worse for wear, hence his name; there's a book, "The Orchard Cat" by Steven Kellog, where mama cat dies of "mumps, warts, chicken pox, gout, and several other ailments brought on by an evil life". Our new friend looks as though he suffers from at least those afflictions, and a few more besides. Here's a photo of him. We can't get any closer than this. That's fine. We don't want to tame and molly-coddle him. He's a lean, mean killer of voles. Go on Raggedy Hobo Cat! Do your worst!
And just for good measure, we're installing an owl box in the woods too. Hoping owls’ gastronomic preferences run to voles and not cats.