SAND SALT &


Wildlife notes from Forest and Coast by Graeme Lamkin of Arum Design Tel: 645913


It is a great pity for some creatures, that their acvies somemes conflict with our own. Generally speaking, such conflicts are a lile one‐sided in their resoluon, most oen culminang in the demise of the said ‘pest’. Somemes pests can be agricultural, good examples being deer or wood pigeons, whose main crime is to take more than their fair share of crops intended for human consumpon. Somemes they are a health menace – such as rats, or, if you are a cale farmer, possibly badgers– who are believed to transmit bovine tuberculosis across the species divide. Some pests are, conveniently, very good to eat – thus, while they may be a competor for our food, they can themselves also be food for us, therein lessening their overall impact.


One creature that is in almost every way


completely harmless– and possibly even beneficial– but whose habits can be most inconvenient, is the mole. Almost enrely subterranean


in habit, few people have ever seen a mole, and, rather amusingly, opinions differ considerably regarding how big a mole is in reality. Rather than ever seeing Ray’s sidekick in the flesh, we mostly only see the evidence of his strenuous


excavaons– great heaps of soil and undermined turf that can trip the unwary! These molehills can be very large, which makes it hard for many people to believe that the creator of all this spoil is only about six inches long. While only small, moles are extremely powerful– able to shi piles of soil at least three mes their own body‐weight. The key to this strength is a very muscular front end, with over‐developed front legs and paddle‐like feet that enable the mole to plough through the soil with a breast‐stroke‐like moon. To handle a mole is quite a challenge, for while they are not inclined to bite, their strength makes them extremely difficult to hold onto! In rough pasture and wild country, moles are a problem to no one, but where they venture into playing fields and golf courses their presence is less welcome. On the ‘gallops’ of the Newbury downs, they are especially disliked, as an unseen tunnel can very easily put paid to the future of a very expensive racehorse and cost its owner dearly. In years gone by, moles were controlled quite rigorously. So much so, that their pelts were available in such quanty, that many fashionable ladies wore coats of mole skin. To my mind at least, it is far beer to ulise the fur of the unfortunate mole– than to simply leave it


to rot. On a side note, some people seem to confuse mole fur with moleskin– the laer simply being a tradional country fabric made of brushed coon. Personally, I have always harboured a certain fondness for the mole, and while I have, in the course of my work, occasionally had to employ the services of a mole‐trapper, my favoured method of control is simply to wait by a mole‐hill unl it starts moving, then furiously dig out the mole and relocate him somewhere else. Not always praccable, but very sasfying nonetheless. Once the mole is captured (or in other cases killed) it is essenal to rotovate the runs and destroy them, otherwise, within a very short me, another mole will simply take over the vacant run system, and probably extend it further! Intriguingly, the humble mole has for over three hundred years been the subject of a toast ‘To the lile gentleman in black velvet!’. This was a recognion that all moles are secretly Roman Catholic– since it was a mole that did for William III, Prince of Orange and usurper of the English crown from James II, when his horse stumbled into a mole run and threw him to his death in 1702. Who would have thought moles could be so parsan?


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