Groundbreaking news.
Moles are back. Well, actually, they haven’t really gone anywhere other than down. These earthmovers are active year-round and don’t hibernate. They are, however, making themselves known to us and are kicking off their seasonal surficial resurgence.
Have you tripped over (or into) their terrestrial tunnels? I did last week and, along with the singing red-winged blackbirds and serenading spring peepers, count the emergence of these mole tunnels as an early sign of spring. Perhaps not as famous as their groundhog cousins, moles are nevertheless harbingers of spring in their own way, as they, too pop up to profess the season.
Once the soil breaks its freeze, the excavating of their eruptive passageways begins in earnest. The subsurface tunnels are created as moles search for food. During the winter, moles are active, but find food deeper below the frozen surface where we cannot detect their activity. Now, their food forays are visible to us as they rise to the areas just beneath our feet.
Insects are a mole’s favorite foods, and these mighty mammals “eat heavy” (as the advice at Betsy’s Diner in Falmouth goes). Moles hunt for food all day and reportedly eat 60 to 100 per cent of their body weight each day. That translates to about 140 grubs or earthworms per day and about 50 pounds of food each year. To accomplish this, one mole must excavate approximately 150 feet of tunnels per day.
And these determined diggers do this in a relatively small amount of space. The home range of male moles is less than three acres, while females only require 3/4 of an acre to do the same. Continuous consumption is required for survival, as a mole will die if deprived of food for 12 hours. Besides earthworms, they will consume slugs, beetles, centipedes and ants, and can also munch on roots and plant matter when necessary (or easily found in your garden).
Underground is not upsetting to them, since moles are not afraid of the dark. Moles are denizens of the dim and shadowy underworld. The smart ones spend the entirety of their lives beneath the ground. The ones that surface may not survive. It is safe down there. With limited predators below the surface, moles thrive. Aboveground, they are quickly consumed by hunters such as hawks, owls, raccoons and domestic dogs and cats.
While vulnerable above the ground, they are definitely not delicate down below. Their fossorial ways are enabled through a variety of adaptations. Mole eyes are minimized and are covered with skin that allows only perception of light and dark, but not sight as we see it. Ears are internal and useful for detecting vibration, more than sound. Their most advanced sensory organ is their snout, which can detect vibrations and scents and determine from where these machinations come.
If you meet a mole on Martha’s Vineyard, it could only be one of three statewide species. Eastern moles are found here, while star-nosed and hairy tailed moles are not. Interestingly, there was a report of a hairy-tailed mole specimen collected on-Island in 1842, though there has never been a sighting or recurrence of this species since then. One and done for the hairy-tailed mole, I guess.
Eastern moles will continue to exist and persist here, no matter how infrequently they are seen in person (or mole-son). And they should be thanked for their pest control abilities, soil aeration, nutrient cycling and drainage. Their mountains (and molehills) are just evidence of these simple below-ground beings, stumbling their way through life and dirt, digging, eating and making more moles mindless to the mayhem of our world just above their heads.
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.