The subject of voles hadn’t arisen in our house for several years until a few weeks ago, when Jim discovered that the leaves of several healthy hostas planted around a stone patio at the edge of the woods were lying sadly on the ground. Last week I noticed that half of the leaves of a large daylily inside the fence had turned yellow. The other half of the plant was green. When I tugged at the yellow leaves, they pulled away in my hand with the telltale sign of vole predation: no roots!

Voles are cute little rodents, often called field mice or meadow mice, but they are more closely related to hamsters and lemmings. One way to differentiate a vole from a true mouse is by the length of its tail. Voles have short, stumpy tails, while mouse tails are 1-2 inches longer.According to information on the Virginia Fish and Wildlife Service website, the vole most commonly found on the Middle Peninsula is the pine vole (Microtus pinetorum scalapsoides), although several other species also resid...