Good Growing

This week, we have a Gardenbite excerpt from our webinar, in which we discussed wildlife damage in the home landscape. In this clip, Chris details two common rodents in Illinois that tend to pop up in the winter months around the outside and inside of our homes: the vole and the mouse. While the vole is an active pest outside during the winter, many Illinoisians also deal with mice in the home this time of year. Chris gives some tips and tricks for dealing with these two rodents and preventing their damage this winter.

Watch on YouTube https://youtu.be/Si2Q9HpKpFI

Dealing with Winter Wildlife Damage - Good Growing Winter Webinar https://youtu.be/84aZvRWl9VA?si=FvcB7qDyZRzJLlcY

1:34 Voles
8:37 Mice

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Chris Enroth: cenroth@illinois.edu
Ken Johnson: kjohnso@illinois.edu 


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Creators & Guests

Host
Chris Enroth
University of Illinois Extension Horticulture Educator serving Henderson, Knox, McDonough, and Warren Counties
Host
Ken Johnson
University of Illinois Extension Horticulture Educator serving Calhoun, Cass, Greene, Morgan, and Scott Counties

What is Good Growing?

Talking all things horticulture, ecology, and design.

Chris:

Welcome to the Good Growing Podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with the University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a garden bite for you today. It's getting cold outside, which means we're coming indoors into our warm homes, all nice and bundled up. But that also means there might be some other critters wanting to find themselves inside our homes as well. Well, this week, we are going to take an excerpt from our wildlife damage webinar that we did a few years ago.

Chris:

And in this excerpt, we are going to focus on, 2 rodents, which might be more prevalent, which we might see more of in the winter months. The first one being voles with a v and also mice. Now voles with a v might be more of an issue out in the landscape causing damage to some of our trees, whereas mice might be causing damage, say, in our pantry as they get into a lot of our stored cereals and grains and so on. Enjoy. And now we're going to dive into the teeniest of the tiniest of the, pests for today.

Chris:

And like what, what Ken had mentioned with squirrels, I think for the most part, everything that we have seen so far have been protected, by law. You do need permits for these. But what we're going to talk about here, the voles and mice, you do not necessarily need a permit, for these guys. And so let's dive right in to voles. Now when I say voles, I am saying vol with a v.

Chris:

I feel like so often moles with an m are often the accused as being the culprit of some damage that happens in the landscape. I often find though that moles with an m tend to be a bit more beneficial, to our yards, at least from the standpoint of aerating my soil. But voles with a v, they can be downright destructive. And there are several species of voles that are found in Illinois. For the most part, we will be dealing, with like the prairie vole and the meadow vole.

Chris:

And those are the primary species that we'll be dealing with. Then some of the ways how we tell the difference between a vole and a mouse because they look almost exactly like a mouse. Well a vole they're a bit more stockier. They have a bit more of kind of a bulk to them. They're anywhere from 4 to 7 inches in length and they weigh up to 50 grams.

Chris:

So I mean, again, very much mouse like. But I would say the key distinction between a vole and a mouse is their tail. They have a very short tail. Oftentimes it's like the length of maybe an inch, half inch. Oftentimes what I found is that the literature is compares the length of their tail to like their hind leg.

Chris:

It's about the same length as their hind leg. But so that is the key distinction that I have found. And when I find, say, voles out in the yard. And here in this image here you can see that that very small tail there on that rodent and just that stocky nature of the vole. You know he just he looks pretty fat and happy there, with his cute little tail.

Chris:

Now voles, like a lot of the other critters we've talked about today, can be very prolific. They can have several litters per year and the size of the litter does vary by species. So our prairie and meadow voles, they can have up to 3 to 5 within a single litter. Woodland voles, they can have up to 2 to 3. And if you're wondering where do these voles, inhabit?

Chris:

Well, their name seems to indicate that. Prairie voles, obviously more of an open kind of prairie agriculture setting. Meadow voles are similar, but maybe getting a little bit more forested. And then woodland voles, of course, typically are found in the wooded areas. These guys have a very short lifespan, often less than 1 year.

Chris:

And this is really because they are a very important food source for other predators. So even though we don't necessarily like seeing them in the landscape, and they do cause a lot of damage, they do serve a very important role. We don't necessarily want to say, hey, we just eliminate voles entirely. That would not be good for our ecosystem. But even if they do some good in the food chain, they also can do some bad in the landscape.

Chris:

So I do recall having a fruit tree grower. They were just starting out up in Warren County, Illinois, and they gave me a call after the spring and their fruit trees looked like the tree there on the left side of that screen. You know, they had probably a half acre of fruit trees that had been completely chewed on the the base of that tree. They had removed all the the trunk and all the tissue behind that trunk, and they feasted on that as it was covered in snow. And they used that snow as cover, so that no predators like hawks and things could go after them.

Chris:

Completely decimated this startup, a tree fruit orchard. So lesson learned. Right? So that is one major thing is they they can attack our younger trees or our trees that have very thin bark, things like our maples and such. And they'll eat a lot of other plants too.

Chris:

Not only will they go after trees, but you know if, tulips and a lot of the things that the deer will eat, the voles will eat as well. And the picture here on the right side of the screen, this is very common sight after the snow melts away and we reveal the runways that the voles have created underneath the snow. They will actually chew on the grass right there, create those runways. Now while it may look really nasty and ugly, very often once that grass starts growing again in the spring, it often can flush with that green growth and fill those spaces in easily. Now what can we do to control these, little critters?

Chris:

Well, sometimes we would say the most assured way is to keep them away from whatever target that they're going after. And so here, you can see these tree collars have been employed to prevent voles from eating on there. Also rabbits, it can prevent deer from rubbing on there. And so there's a lot of reasons to invest in something like a trunk collar or trunk protection, especially if you have a young tree and especially, say, if you wanna grow a couple tree fruit in your backyard. This is a situation right here, taken by a colleague of ours, Richard Henschel.

Chris:

So after the snow melted in, up in where he's at, located in the collar counties of Cook County, these vole runways. Now where do you think the voles are here? Well, if I follow these pathways back, they're probably residing in this denser, grassy vegetation here in the background. That's probably where they're living. And then they emerge from there and they go out and they search for food.

Chris:

If I wanted to do something like a trap, you might consider something this is my multi catch trap. With this multi catch trap, you basically wind it up, you set it by the runway, by where that entrance is to their home. You can bait it with some bird seed, and then they will walk through that little hole there and it will flip them in the holding area. So it is a live trap. There are methods to dispatch them as we wanna do that humanely as best we can.

Chris:

And so follow the trap instructions for how to dispatch those, animals humanely. And don't necessarily leave them outside so they can die of exposure because that is not a humane way to go. Also encourage natural predators. You know, voles, they're not they're not like the worst, disease carrying animal, but they certainly can, potentially be vectors of disease. And as we get into mice, you'll definitely see that.

Chris:

But think about snakes. Snakes don't carry human diseases. I mean, maybe venom, but that's rare. Maybe if you live in Southern Illinois that could be, more of a commonplace, but definitely not where I'm at. And other folks in the northern parts of the state.

Chris:

So you can encourage natural predation. You can install hawk roost where the large posts where hawks and owls can sit and monitor and help you out. Put pieces of tin down in the landscape where snakes would want to inhabit. So encouraging that natural predation that could help keep things in check. We used to have voles in our high tunnel here at the Extension office.

Chris:

And once, we had a really bad year they really went after our sweet potatoes. But then that that next year, the voles were gone. Every time I walked in the high tunnel, I encountered a snake. And that was fine. All you got to do is stomp your feet really hard.

Chris:

They hear you and they go away. So and then habitat modification. Again, as you can see in this image on the right side of the screen, where do they like to live? In that tall brushy, scrubby area right there. So, you know, clean some of that up, you know, reduces that, area for them where they would want to live.

Chris:

Now let's cover mice just real briefly here. And aren't they cute? But cute they are. But we don't necessarily want them in our house. And there are actually 6 species of mice that are native to Illinois.

Chris:

But keep in mind the house mouse, which is probably the one that we will mostly encounter in our home, it is not native, to Illinois. So but we do have some native ones and they also, just like the vole, serve a very important role in the food web. Many predators rely on mouse populations as their primary food source. And so pictured here on the left side of the screen we have the house mouse. Now they're characterized as more of a sometimes grayish.

Chris:

This one pictured here is a bit more brownish, in color but more of a grayish mouse. The deer mouse here in the middle screen, they're a little bit smaller. Their ears are almost kinda hairless, and they have kind of that white underside on the right. And the deer mouse is more kinda open ag prairie Meadowlands. White footed mouse now that's more of a woodland type species.

Chris:

The deer mouse and white footed mouse they don't necessarily, I mean you can find them in the same places but their habitats don't necessarily overlap with each other. White footed mouse and deer mouse are pretty similar in appearance, both of them have very similar characteristics. And the problem with mice is that they, like the deer, have adapted very well to us humans. And where there are humans there undoubtedly are mice. And mice can carry human pathogens.

Chris:

Wild mice, in this part of the country are known to carry hantavirus or hantavirus. The house mouse is not believed to carry this disease, however. Now this is an important thing that there are other diseases that pathogens, these rodents can carry. Antivirus, one of those that, you know, has there's a lot of information and there's a lot of cause for concern. And one of the ways to deal with something like mouse droppings if they get in the house is that you never clean up mouse droppings dry.

Chris:

You spray them down with bleach or Lysol. You use some type of a wet cleaning system so that that dust that gets created doesn't blow up and you don't inhale that because hantavirus can be inhaled and you can get infected with that. So making sure you're always using some type of a kind of a wet cleaning system. It could be a wet rag or sponge or spritzing down, but never vacuum dry mouse droppings. And mice get into food.

Chris:

I mean, we've all probably had a mouse in the house and oftentimes they they are usually there, but we usually know them when they get into the pantry and they get into those food stores. In the landscape, mice can also cause damage to plants. We don't necessarily think of a link like that, but they do they do very similar damage that voles will do. And they can be a nuisance to some garden crops. And so they're they can be a nuisance.

Chris:

But very often when we encounter these guys, it is in the house. So what are some control options? Well, in the house, the best thing, of course, is going to be physical exclusion, is building them out. And that is the the lingo speak here. Making sure that they cannot get in, from either the roof or from underneath siding and, the various openings because they can squeeze through very narrow openings.

Chris:

Anything that is larger than a quarter inch should be sealed. So you should be using if you're trying to protect plants or anything like that it should be a quarter inch hardware cloth mesh. That way you can make sure that they're staying and they can't squeeze through there and you bury that bottom of that mesh a little bit in the soil. Beta traps That is, probably one of the the in terms of physical exclusion, next would be beta traps. And so pictured here on the left side of the screen, this is a snap trap.

Chris:

You're the simple wooden snap trap. Works fantastically. This is my baited, snap trap here. And I like the plastic because I can well it's dirty now but I can clean and sterilize it every time I catch a mouse. And they're they are fairly easy to set and they're reusable.

Chris:

You would just bait there's a little cup in here that you bait with peanut butter, or even you could tie a piece of bacon to this platform here. One thing that folks might ask and they say, well the mouse keeps either stealing the food from the trap or they keep they're able to get the they're they're avoiding the the trap altogether. One thing that you could try is actually baiting the trap without setting the trap. This gets them comfortable with the mechanism, and they might be a little less cautious next time, they come around, to try to take the food and you can set the trap at that point in time. Now there are also poison baits that you can use, out there.

Chris:

And so for the most part a lot of like commercial vegetable growers, they have to keep mice and other rodents out of their, you know, their sheds that they clean vegetables and things like that. So they might have to use some type of a bait station or a trap station. Really, recommendation goes though, poison bait only to supplement physical exclusion and trapping. If those aren't working then you could turn to poison bait. Making sure that you're reading those label directions and you're protecting that bait from getting, being accessed by non target animals.

Chris:

Cats, dogs, kids, and, the occasional stray human, one of us adults here. So I I tend to not recommend poison baits because I've used poison baits in the past. Now what happens when the when a mouse eats a poison bait? Well, it leaves somewhere and dies in your wall. There's nothing you never would never think that something so small could smell so bad.

Chris:

But it is certainly the case. And there's not much you can do about that unless you're willing to pull the traps or sorry. Pull out your drywall and and fish out the dead mouse from your walls. Well, that was some great information about dealing with voles in the landscape and mice in our homes. If you want to see that webinar in its entirety where we talk not only about rodents, we also discuss deer, raccoons, squirrels, rabbits, and what to do about the damage that they cause in the landscape, we will leave a link to that below in the podcast description.

Chris:

Well, the Good Growing Podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension edited this week by me, Chris Enra. Hey. Special thank you. Hey, listeners. Thank you for doing what you do best and that is listening.

Chris:

Or if you're watching us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.