Humorous article with a very sobering message. Bit by bit evidence of global warming is turning up everywhere & producing bizarre results such as those described in the article. Thanks for posting this.

I wonder if it would work on rose midge? Maybe if I hired an orchestra. Or I could "sing", or at least make noise. Splash could chime in with a few barks. That might do it. Yeah! That's the ticket.

Barbara

The voles are out here in large numbers. I'm just waiting on a rose to go timber. I will kill one if I can find one! I seriously think about going out at night with a flashlight.
Entertaining article Ann.

Carla

I found a paper that suggests encouraging predators--it says the best predator is a healthy young house cat. It also suggests having suitable perches for owls, crows, and hawks.

Here is a link that might be useful: U of Md cooperative extension paper

I can echo the cat suggestion! I have two healthy young indoor/outdoor cats who began life as barn cats at a friend's dairy farm. Nike and Frank arrived all cuddly and lovable, a few months old, in early summer 03. They made a trip to the vet for spay/neuter thing, and go every year for all their necessary immunizations. I have no more moles or voles around the house, and very few chipmunks make it close to the house for long (I live in a clearing in the woods).
Of course, I do have to accept the cleanup of whatever they leave on my deck. The record day was three chipmunk heads (I don't want to know where the rest went), two gray rodent tails with some innards attached, and a perfect mole. They don't seem to like the taste of mole.
The other downside, until I learned to brace the slider screen, was that Duke, the old indoor cat, learned how to open the slider, and let the hunters in at night while he went AWOL. I always call them in when I am ready to go to sleep. They don't always show up before dawn, but if they do I don't let them bring in any presents. Well Duke did, and one morning I woke up to find Nike purring on the pillow next to me - and bloodstains next to her. And she didn't have a mark on her....so my guess is she brought in her midnight snack. So now Duke can't open the screen.
Not only are there fewer yard and garden rodents, the annual fall invasion into garage and cellar is under control.
There is maintenance involved - the cats take more work than my six chickens - but the payoff is worth it. BTW, I have two large litter boxes, three in the winter when the hunters take a sabbatical and refuse to go out. In the summer, when they can spend a lot of time outside, only Duke uses "the facilities" and I can clean every other day. In the winter, I add the third box and clean daily.
Get a cat!

Voles are a challenge. No doubt we have a different species of voles in California. I don't dislike cats but I do dislike their scorched earth predation. After my indoor/outdoor cats died at the age of 18, I was shocked how much wildlife returned to my suburban garden, lizards, snakes, and ground-nesting birds in particular. I now live in a watershed filled with native frogs and toads. No cats allowed here. My dogs are decent ratters and won't tolerate voles near the house. If we find them, we lay gravel in their runways, and they skeedaddle. There is no winning this war. It's an ongoing maintenance battle.

Hello Berndoodle - no scorched earth predation here - I have birds(jays of course, cardinals, sparrows,the little sparrow shaped ones with yellow bellies, crows, chickadees, robins, sleek grayish ones that look like small sexy crows, etc - not to mention the hawks that nest on the ridge) snakes in the leachfield and on the edge of the scrub where there are blackberries, toads, salamanders (except for the suicidal pair that I saw - briefly - in the hen yard...etc. I intentionally don't feed birds due to the black bear factor. Cats ignore them all. I think the difference may be between living in the ovegrown woods a mile from a little village and living in the suburbs - my hunters just have so much territory to rodent hunt, they ignore their less preferred prey. I have lost one mature old hunter in recent years, I think to a fisher, and when Duke last escaped, something put a serious hole in his side (he just doesn't have outdoor smarts like Nike and Frank)sending him to the vet not once but three times for the infection. And when Nike was a year old, she came in with one ear half skinned. Took an antibiotic shot, and the fur grew back, but the ear has a little notch in it. So my outdoor cats take their chances in the Circle. When I walk my dog (who is never loose, either in the house with me, walking on a lead, or tethered by the side of the barn while I do chores), at twilight we often see the local pair of coyotes watching from the field down the road. So I don't think my cats are doing real damage to anything except the rodents.
And if anyone got the wrong idea about feeding them, from the fact they enjoy chipmunk tartare, they have free access to dry kibble at will in the house, and they start everyday jumping off my bed racing me to the kitchen, me for tea, all three of the cats for morning tuna....