With their temerity, tenacity and talent, it is hard not to root for voles.
Some gardeners might disagree, as these little looters do plenty of rooting around themselves, and have been known to damage garden plants, trees and orchards.
Eastern meadow voles are also called meadow mice and field mice but are not related to true mice. To the untrained eye, they may look superficially similar, but there are some distinct differences. Both are rodents, but they diverge from there into their own scientific families.
True mice are usually found indoors, and their bodies are slender with long tails to help them squeeze into small places. Voles are stockier, with shorter tails and prefer the outdoors. Large ears and eyes and angular snout are distinguishing characteristics of mice, while voles have a more circular snout and smaller ears.
Even with the garden grift, eastern meadow voles are easier to appreciate since they won’t be knocking on your door or, more likely, sneaking into your house through the smallest opening.
Meadow voles, more formally Microtus pennsylvanicus, make a big impression in the Island’s fields and wetlands. With tunnel vision, they excavate subterranean burrows and also create surface runways that provide cover from predators, nursery areas for breeding, and protection from the elements.
Vole runways appear as unvegetated (sometimes with grass woven over them) tracks that meander through fields or marshes. During the winter, and in places with snow cover, the voles thrive in the subnivean zone — above ground but below the snow. Their runways are not the emergent tunnels that you sink into when stepped on; those are the result of moles, animals that have little in common besides their rhyming name.
Though the home range of a single vole is less than an acre, the population density of these animals is striking. In an old field, 45 voles per acre is typical. This is a drop in the bucket, though, when you consider that peak density can be more than 500 hundred animals per acre. And, unbelievably, in the most perfect places, like a northern prairie wetland, one study counted a groundbreaking 983 voles per acre.
Those numbers are possible not only because of fertile fields, but also because of fecund females. Meadow voles are bountiful breeders in their tunnels of love (sorry Bruce). Even with their short lifespan of a year (two months to two years is possible), they make the most of their time on (and in) the earth.
With a 21-day gestation, and immediate postpartum estrus, a female can produce many pups. She will start her reproductive life as early as three weeks old and then produce three to six (and up to 10) pups per pregnancy. Five to ten litters are possible with optimum conditions. Do the math and that is a lot of little ones. There is really no rest for the weary mama voles.
Most of those youngsters won’t survive to adulthood. One study suggests that more than 80 per cent of those young will perish in their first 30 days of life. Baby voles can become food for predators including hawks, owls, mammals and snakes.
But while these creatures live their best buried lives, they do have some undesirable traits that even I can’t abide. Give them their space, as they can carry bubonic plague, babesiosis, tularemia, and, of course, ticks that have Lyme and other issues.
So, while well grounded, the Eastern Meadow Vole leaves a trail of impressive and concerning traits. Either you dig ‘em or you don’t.
Suzan Bellincampi is director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown, and author of Martha’s Vineyard: A Field Guide to Island Nature and The Nature of Martha’s Vineyard.