Disclaimer: No voles were harmed during the events that inspired this post.

A relative of the hamster and just as cute, voles have made our lives over the last few weeks a living nightmare. I’m too upset to show you a picture of how cute they are, you’ll have to ‘google’ them yourself if you’ve never seen one 🙂 It all started with my mission to get us organized and have every inch of our home shipshape. Not an easy task but over the holidays Ivan, my mom and I made huge progress and even tackled the garage. We recycled what felt like a hundred cardboard boxes, finally finished unpacking our things and got a good handle on garage clutter. In the process I found Cordelia’s kibble (our sweet woodchuck who lives under our deck that’s been in her slumber since last November) and made the mistake of leaving it in the garage, uncovered in a plastic box without a lid.  The temptation of chicken-flavored kibble must have been tremendous because apparently voles don’t usually get into people’s garages (or so we were told) but they broke those rules and made a mess of everything. They were sneaky too, and managed to steal kibble unnoticed for several weeks before we realized what was going on and what attracted them in the first place. Long story short, we’re now vole-free (knock on wood, it wasn’t easy) and have made a plan to keep the space in perfect condition. We ordered wooden shelves from Ikea and a dozen storage boxes (with vole-proof lids!) from Walmart. And lesson learned, no more kibble lying around!

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