Spirit - the amazing grey dewlap toulouse gander!

[Marty1876]

vole

short but not stuf tail, close ears, rounded body

shrew

and mole the shrew can have long or short tails, and long or short snout. Moles have stub tail and big "hands"

 

[Miss Lydia]

Moles are the size of small rats, but short stub tails, and a rounder nose. They don't use their eyes much, as they are underground dwellers.

Hi Iain, I'm doing OK, thanks! How are you and all your cute goosies? As a science, getting to discuss biology is a real treat!

The moles we have are pretty small, course maybe they are youngsters, we sometime find them dead on the dirt driveway we live on. just looks like they died, kinda weird. So i am going to try and find out what this rodent is that makes holes in the ground close to the bird feeders and also close to where I put out the flocks food, any idea Marty? I thought it was a vole but after seeing a pic of one on google I don't think so. more investigating, .

 

[Marty1876]

mus (house mouse) chimera (cross of mus x mouse) and mouse (deer mouse)

 

[Iain Utah]

Those pics are pretty cool, although I'm well familiar with voles here and we get mice and moles too. Aren't voles more common to the west? I know Utah has had a few serious outbreaks of them over the years.

Marty, my crew are all good, thanks. They enjoyed the slightly warmer sunny day today. Glad you are enjoying the chat here.

 

[Marty1876]

I've never seen a vole here, except stuffed or in a bottle. I think they are problematic more out west. Around here pack rats are problematic, and we killed about 25 mice (not counting the cats good work) last week alone. Love my old house, but oh my its a mus nest this time of year.

 

[Iain Utah]

Don't even get me started on pack rats. They drive me crazy because they try to build nests on top of my engine in the winter. I'm constantly cleaning out pinecones, hay, and an amazing assortment of random stuff from my engine. I've killed a few by accident when driving and have had to fish out remains, too.

We also have the hantavirus carrying rats in the southern desert areas. Those are a serious threat.

 

[Marty1876]

Yep, thats pack rats all over! The also build in our cars, but only if they aren't started often. Its amazing what they pick up, isn't it??? I totally sympathize.

We also have problems with virus carrying rats.

 

[Iain Utah]

Speaking of which I need to check under my burb's hood as it's been a couple of weeks since I drove it. I had to chase a squirrel away from building a nest in it last month. Virus carrying rodents is on a whole different level than packrats or voles. Luckily, I haven't seen any rodents around my place. I love my 4 cats.

 

[Marty1876]

Cats are great, I agree.

 

[RURU]

We had a mouse make a nest in my car and it clogged off the heat and cooling vent and burned out the heater. That was a costly $250.00 repair.

Plus the mice get into the house on the lower level. I had to go and clean all the drawers and cabinets out it had mouse crap all over in them. They never came in the house when I had the cats.
But had to place them all because I could no longer clean the litterpans. I use to raise Siamese, Oriental Shorthair, Colorpoint Shorthair. As I changed and sold some of the ones I got at the end Russian Peterbald which are a hairless cat but also can be born with a regular coat, a chamie coat a wirehair coat and a few more types. But they were hard to up keep becauese the bald and the chamie coats need bathing weekly because they have no hair and get oily and dirty fast.
It got too much for me to kep up with. But I sure did not have mice then. So cats do keep the mice out of the house.
I thought about an outside cat and my husband said NO, no more cats.