Autumn is here and, after months of drought, the moles are settling back into their routine. They’ve had a hard time of it this year. During the desiccating summer months, moles struggled to dig tunnels through baked and unyielding ground, and subsisted on dry, unappetising fare – small creatures that fell through cracks in the parched soil. Moles eat most invertebrates but earthworms are what they want most. A mole needs to eat half its bodyweight in food each day, but it takes just six large water- and nutrient-rich worms to satisfy its metabolism and thirst. As the drought continued, the worms retreated deep into moister soil.
A lucky mole found the bank of the stream that flows by my house, and rampantly threw up molehills along the wet water margin,…
You're reading a preview of
The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, October 2018