Hunting

Our dog, Bear, and I have both become hunters and it’s hard to say which one is more humane. He hunts to eat his prey and I hunt to keep our food from being eaten.

Does anyone know what voles are? They are like mice but fatter, with almost no tail, and they dig complex tunnels underground like moles.

I was prepared to live and let live, even though the lawn was constantly erupting with little hills of dirt. I started getting upset when they discovered my cash crop of beautiful purple, red and white potatoes. I became very concerned when the tunnels appeared around my expensive linden tree, planted especially for the bees. The last straw was seeing bite marks on my beets, carrots and cucumbers.

I asked my neighbours what to do. They were not much help. Research on the internet showed that voles breed about 8 times a year and the babies are on their own at 12 days old. With all the food my garden was providing, there was probably a great population explosion going on underground!

Ray brought some rat traps home. We baited them with apple pieces and put them under buckets so Bear wouldn’t get his nose accidentally sliced off. The next morning, I went out to check the traps. The first one had been sprung. I saw a little vole scurrying off. Then I noticed some tiny ears and a little tail on the trap. The vole I had seen had just cannibalized his unfortunate brother! Okay – that was very disturbing and made me hate voles even more.

The next day Ray brought home some poison pellets. I took a butter knife, a pair of gloves and the pellets. By studying the pattern in which the dirt is flung, I’ve become pretty good at finding the hidden entrances to the tunnels. Once the hole is exposed, I toss a few pellets in and cover it up again. After a few days, dead voles and mice have started turning up, and there are no new fresh hills of dirt. So it’s working. I’m pretty gleeful about it, but it’s a bit cowardly, I admit. I don’t actually have to catch anything or watch it die.

Bear is a different kind of hunter. Today I was on a walk with our two occasional foster kids. It was a beautiful day, not too hot. Bear loves going for a swim in the river. As he was coming back to the trail, we heard an animal shrieking and screaming pathetically. Bear came up from the river with a raccoon in his mouth. I tried to make him drop it but it was his catch, and our normally gentle, obedient dog had his mind made up. It took him quite a while to bite that poor raccoon to death. I told the kids not to watch but we were all a bit traumatized. Then we had to follow Bear home with the raccoon in his mouth.

So which is better, being poisoned with perhaps a slow painful death, or the terror and agony of being hunted, caught and killed in quick succession. It’s pretty great being at the top of the food chain but we all die anyway. Sorry to be so gloomy. Life and death are in your face when you live in the country.