Waging War

My neighborhood has a vole infestation. If you watch the news, maybe you saw us there (lovely thing for your neighborhood to be famous for). The ugly little creatures have completely taken over, so we've declared war on them. There are not one, but two, Facebook groups dedicated to ridding the world of voles. We have a neighborhood poison dealer; she orders this fabulous stuff called Kaput in bulk, and we all buy it off her. You regularly see people walking down the street with their arms full of poison packets. Shooting the critters with pellet guns has become the new favorite sport. The neighborhood cats are getting fat. One guy offered to dress in tights and play the flute to see if he could lure them out of town. I have a friend who suggested I try singing to them to see if they'd come into my house, clean it, and then leave, like they do for Giselle in Enchanted. That didn't work. Of course, I was singing something like "Come here, little voles, come here so I can smash your heads and kill you," so that probably wasn't very inviting. I've stopped being grossed out when I get to dispose of the dead ones that show up in my yard. In fact, now I do a little happy dance and squeal with glee.

According to those who know, voles don't come into houses because they only feed on plants, and they're so much worse this year because it's so dry and we had such a mild winter, so next year we probably won't have such a huge problem. So why all the fuss? Well, according to one kid in my Primary class, if a vole bites you, you'll go to bed and wake up crazy the next morning and you'll start running around killing people. Scary. Besides, they've killed my tomato plants and my flowers, and they've made my entire yard look like this:

Die, voles, die!