This is a vole.

Cute, right?

They look like the little field mice in Bill Murray's Scrooged. Cute little ears, small and almost delicate looking, with soft fur (or so it seems...I'd do just about anything for the research cause, but touching--dare I say petting--a little field vole is a bridge too far).

There are 8 species of voles in Colorado, and according to the Colorado extension service, their little burrows--they call them runways--look like the picture below:

I'm telling you about voles because I recently moved to the mountains. Cute little place with lots of trees and wildlife, and a lot less crowded and closer to the hiking I love. Did I mention the wildlife? We have two mama deer and their babies that traipse through our yard. Sometimes the babies are on their own, and well, that's quite disconcerting to hear these fawns bawling for mama, but so far, it's only happened once during a thunderstorm, and what baby hasn't cried for its mama in a storm?

Nala, the neurotic little digger-dog, sits at the window, watching for the deer who commute through our yard every evening like clockwork. She thinks she's died and gone to heaven. Or maybe hell, because she's banned from running the property while the fawns are still about, so she's confined to the dog run.

Starting early last week, Nala, in retaliation, began to dig in the dog run. She hasn't done any mad digging in years. Was she trying to get out? Pretty impressive little hole that I sent my son to go fill while I hauled her upstairs to give her a shower. Mud dripped from her snout and covered her ears, but she wouldn't go willingly, so I donned my swimsuit and climbed into the shower with her. Took awhile for the water to run clear, and she nearly made a mad-wet dash through the house, but while she's faster, I have opposable thumbs. Closed the door to the shower and made her suffer through the indignity of a wash-and-rinse with baby shampoo.

I've been watching her like a new puppy every time she goes out to the dog run, because I can't have her digging up the yard, and I figure at some point, she'll get the hint and quit digging like she's in Alcatraz. By this point I've identified more runways leading away from our dog run and have visited the online extension service website, and I kinda-sorta have a plan to eradicate the things, because that's a little too close to the house for my liking.

As an aside, when we first moved in, we thought we had a mouse. I do a lot of things as a single mom that I'd rather not do, but mouse patrol is pushing my boundaries. First, we tried "safe" non-poisonous baits, which if you focus on the word non-poisonous sounds like a kindler, gentler method, but everyone else realizes that this means that stuff works as well as a human placebo. Made me feel better but didn't do a damn thing to the mouse. But I don't want any of our pets to eat poison--or to take a bite out of a mouse that's eaten poison--still toxic--so I use the pet safe stuff. And it works about as well as shredded money.

I finally set up a good old-fashioned mousetrap and we catch our first offender. I opened the kitchen drawer about three inches to peek inside, and all I saw were tiny feet facing straight up at the ceiling [yes, I have since cleaned, sanitized, and bleached every counter, cupboard, drawer, and utensil]. I closed the drawer and practically begged my son to do it. I know it's not fair. I'm a strong and independent woman, so damnit I should be able to handle a mouse trap, but I just couldn't do it. So my boy--a high school graduate this year, so not so young--does the deed. All he said was "I've done grosser things at work [fast food]."

Oh, thank God, because I wasn't really sure who I would call next to take care of a damn mouse, because I simply could not do it.

So as I looked at that sweet picture of the vole, I realize that the mouse I thought we trapped may well have been a vole. I didn't get a close look, because I was too freaked out, but... that's starting to sound right. Added to that, my son has a room in the basement--real nice setup for a teen with lots of space and privacy--and he's been hearing something scratching from inside the wall at night. First of all, if that had happened in my room, we would have moved out, immediately, but thankfully he's more pragmatic and said, "well, I figure it will die soon."

Apparently our mouse problem is really a vole problem, and if I can't handle a mouse, what the hell am I going to do about a vole?

​While I cogitate on this particular problem, my daughter and I watched our evening dose of Gilmore Girls. It was the one where there's a play of Romeo & Juliet at the school, and Dean almost finds out that Rory kissed Tristan. Yes, Dean and Rory were broken up, but still, the tension was high when Nala started talking to me. She's part Lab and part Husky and she likes to talk--she's impressively vocal--and to shut her up, I let her outside, sans chaperone.

Meanwhile, in the show, Rory almost gets busted a couple times, and I'm doing my stress walk away from the TV when I realize that Nala never barked to come back in.

"How long?" my daughter asked.

"I don't know. 35-40 minutes."

Nala comes in without me having to call her. She's panting and wagging her tail like she did the first day we let her run free on the property. She's covered in dirt, her normally yellow snout is the color of a dung beetle, and she has mud and gunk all over her face. It's eleven o'clock at night. My son is at his dad's house, and while I'm still that strong independent woman, I'm not headed out into the dog run in the dark with God-knows-what other critters out there. I'm also not crawling into a swimsuit this time of night to take the reluctant dog to the shower.

I grab a towel, rub her down, wet wash her face--and wasn't that fun--all the while the neurotic dog is nudging me because he doesn't think it's fair that Nala gets all the attention. I finally get her clean enough for the night and head upstairs to check Twitter before bed. I'm scrolling away when I feel a pinch on my inner arm. I brush it away even as I realize that it wasn't an itch but a sting. I check my arm--red and sore--and then turn on my phone flashlight to get a better look around my seat. Where I find a nasty little creepy crawly with more legs than I want to count. I crush him with the flip flop I keep handy for this kind of thing. The move was instant and instinctive, and then my arm really starts to sting. The burn moving along the nerves down toward my elbow.

Fan-freaking-tastic. I go, knock on my daughter's door. We examine the offending bite in the light and see two very defined puncture marks.

​If you've never searched spider bites after midnight and looked at the images, you're really missing out, but we figure out our little bugger wasn't a poisonous variety (still stings like the devil), so I'm willing to call it a night, but I've got that feeling, you know the one, that creepy-crawly-I-feel-bugs-crawling-on-me buzz that runs through your body faster than spider bite? Yeah, I had to shower all those heebie-jeebie's down the drain, put on clean and recently shaken and examined PJs out of the drawer, and realize that in the morning, I've got to go out to the dog run and see what kind of damage a happy little digging dog could do in 30 minutes.

​Did I mention the wildlife?

 To know me for more than 5 minutes is to realize I hate mornings. There are many things I do not like, driving through Kansas in August for instance, but mornings and I have a hate-hate relationship. To borrow a line from the Grinch, hate-hate-hate-hate-hate-LOOOOAAAATTTTHHHHHH.

Last night I stayed up until 4:15 am. (Yes, I know, that's morning, but it feels different when you're staying up rather than waking up.) I was reprogramming the website (take a look around and tell me what you think) and I knew if I went to bed I would lose track of my thought process. It might be weeks before I got back to it. So, I stayed up until 4:15 and then crashed. That's actually a benefit. I'm an insomniac, so sleep often eludes me. If I stay up until all hours, then I crash for several straight hours. Which is where I was this morning at 9 when the neurotic dog started barking to wake me up.

If you have dogs, you know they have different barks that mean different things. He has the "there's a stranger at the door" bark, which is scary (like Cujo), and why anyone would stick around through that is beyond me. He also has the "hey, there's a friend outside" bark, which is insistent and excited. And then there's the "I need breakfast" bark. It's more polite than the others. One loud yip to say, "hey, remember me?" and then he gives me a few minutes. Yips again.

Mason the cat (also a night owl) opens one eye and gives me a look as if to say, "this is why we never should have gotten the dogs." He's been trying to convince me of that for years.

But I'm up now, so I pull on the fuzzy robe the kids got me for Christmas and head downstairs. His claws click-click-click on the kitchen tile as I scoop some kibble for Sky (aka the neurotic dog) and Nala (our rescue). While they eat, I pick out a mug (we have a collection) and brew my one cup a day.

God Bless the Keurig.

​Seriously. We bought the Keurig as the family Christmas gift two years ago and it was worth every penny. In our house, we wake up at different hours so making a full pot of coffee is wasteful. Plus, I really only need one cup to survive the morning. Today, though, working off 4.5 hours sleep... I think I'll go make another cuppa and catch up on the news.

How about you? Coffee drinker? Tea? Night owl or early bird?