Random Tuesday Thoughts – Vole Hunt and Princess Rags

Keely over at The Un-Mom hosts this fun weekly Random Tuesday thing, and if you haven’t jumped on that band wagon, run faster and jump higher – you don’t want to miss out!

That’s a vole. We have voles. I thought they were moles, but my aunt corrected me on that assumption because she has voles, too. I couldn’t figure out why the plants and flowers in the flower bed I have around our brick patio were slowly disappearing – I assumed that maybe the wild rabbits were having a feast. But then I saw the holes – the first one I noticed last year and wondered if it had a snake hiding in it, so I covered that hole promptly and steered clear of that area for a while. But then this year, holes are starting to pop up everywhere in the flower beds. And my plants are disappearing. Voles like to eat the succulent roots, and since they’re hiding under ground, they don’t get caught red handed. Well, unless they decide to run right in front of you when you’re weeding said flower bed.

So I’m going on a vole hunt. Tune in next week to find out who won. If one of the voles is typing my Random Tuesday Thoughts next week, we may all be in trouble. I’m just sayin’.

Sunday night I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Frogs in My Formula, when she happened to post a hilarious post here. If you haven’t read it yet, you really need to. I was laughing out loud as I read it, so of course I had to read it to my hubby. And show him the horse picture at the end of the post. Remember he’s afraid of horses, so he didn’t take too kindly to being shown a picture of one. He shuddered. Which should give Frogs confidence that her horse picture truly is awesome. Princess Nagger even liked the picture, and it prompted this dialogue:

PN: “Nice horse. I draw turtles.”

Me: “Oh, you draw turtles?”

PN: “Yes, whenever I try to draw a horse, it turns into a turtle.”

Princess Nagger went to her first non-family or close friend birthday party on Sunday – the little girl is in her kindergarten class and invited all the girls from the class. The theme was a ‘princess’ theme, so the girls were to wear their favorite ‘Princess Dress’ to the party. Princess Nagger got a dress-up trunk for Christmas, which has some Princess Dresses in it, so I figured one of those would be sufficient. I felt bad when I dropped her off, though, seeing all the other little girls in the fanciest, most phenomenal princess dresses I’ve ever seen – it made the Princess Nagger look like she was Cinderella going to the ball in her rags…but she didn’t care, and that’s what really mattered.
Princess Nagger decided it was the perfect time Sunday afternoon to bring her old Barbie tricycle out and ride it up and down our gravel driveway…in her Princess dress…she was really good at avoiding getting her picture taken, but I did manage to capture one decent one… Ignore the growing dirt pile in the background – the neighbors are up to something, possibly going to finally take care of the strip of land that separates our driveways that has been a mass of weeds every year…here’s hoping the eyesore will be gone this year! 🙂

Feeling Random? Well, you’re not alone. You can find all the cool Random People congregating over at Keely’s place. Her co-host is back with a passion – Kelly the Neurotic Mom at her new home, Baby Boogers. Head on over to both places and spread some Random love. You’ll thank me later. 😉

UPDATE: Several people have asked what the difference between a Vole and a Mole are…

Voles are rodents in the mouse family. They can do a great deal of damage to orchards, row crops and landscaping in a short period of time. Vole burrow openings will have all of the grass at the edge closely cropped and there will not be any apparent soil mounding. In my flower beds they’re leaving just holes, no mounding of the dirt at all. And because they like to eat roots, the plants and bulbs I have planted are slowly disappearing – because they’re having a feast. They don’t hibernate, so they’ve been enjoying themselves all winter long.

Moles eat up to 1-1/2 times their body weight in a day. They mac out on beetles and bugs and earth worms. When they tunnel, they’ll leave behind piles of dirt that can get up to 2 feet tall.

Luckily we don’t have moles as they do greater damage to the yard itself, and it seems the voles are only interested in my flower beds – they haven’t attacked my grape vines and baby cherry trees as of yet…maybe because I planted so many yummy things for them to feast on in my flower beds last year – I need to get rid of them before they spread out and conquer all the other stuff I planted last year!