This morning I saw one of these in the wood pile on the covered terrace:
Picture from Wikimedia Commons
Isn’t it cute?
I was a bit nervous about it being a house mouse, because that’s not really what you want in your garden – or house! – but extensive comparisons of online pictures reveals it to be a bank vole, which is much less worrying.
Sure, they might go for bulbs and so on, but you can’t eliminate nature so you might as well enjoy it, and either way this is a protected species in Denmark, so we just have to accept that from time to time we might loose a tulip bulb or two.
(It does mean, though, that we really need to go around the house and ensure the foundation’s ventilation holes are covered with small grills, so they stay in the garden rather than under the house. They might not be interested in coming inside the house, but we obviously don’t want them under the house, either.)
This little fellow brings us up to three protected species of small mammals in our garden – that I’m aware of – with the shrew and the bats, and there’s something oddly pleasant about this. I’m glad to share the garden with most animals (except slugs), but I’m thrilled when I spot a protected species that seems to find that our garden is a good place to live. It must mean I’m doing something right, even though (or exactly because?) the compost pile needs tidying-up and the lawn needs mowing…
Soooo cute. I love it when I see wildlife in the garden, it makes me feel like I’m doing my bit to help the environment. We had a mouse or vole using our shed as a home the other winter it made quite a mess when it discovered a bag of shredded paper I use for the compost heap. It decided to chew through the bag and take the shreddings away for a warm winter nest. There were bits of plastic bag and paper everywhere. Still I have to admire the little fellow, there are so many cats in my village, the fact he was alive was quite an achievement.
This afternoon I literally had to shoo a pheasant out of the Sunny Border; he was pretty, but he was walking all over my dahlia seedlings!!! Sometimes nature needs to learn some etiquette, I say!
The voles have been in our shed, too, and I’m pleased that they’ve now moved out. Their nests have meant that I’ve had to discard several cushions for garden furniture, since they’ve gathered bulbs there that ended up rotting away!
Yes, the vole is so much cuter than the house mouse. As much as I cant stand the slugs, I suppose its good food for the frogs and the less frequent thrush which visits.
Ah, but you just have the regular North-European slugs… Our problem is mainly with the Spanish slugs; an invasive species that developed in the dry climates of the Spanish plains, so it lays 200 eggs in order to have at least some survive the drought… Trouble is, here in Denmark we never have a drought, so they all hatch, wreaking havoc in gardens throughout the country! We’d need to centuple the number of natural predators to keep this menace at bay…
The vole is cute, though, and I do love having protected species in the garden. They wouldn’t be here if the garden was immaculate, so they give me a reason to plan a garden where there’s room for “mess”.