Moles

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like Moley, one of the characters in ‘The Wind in the Willows’, but real moles are obviously very different… for a start they don’t speak, wear clothes or have friends who are water rats!

I mentioned Mole in a past the other day, and then saw  a post by someone else who mentioned she had seen a live mole and had stroked it. I commented she was lucky not be bitten as they are vicious little creatures. I know this because many years ago, when I was on holiday in Scotland with my dad, Donald, we saw one being attacked by a sea-gull. Donald scared the bird away and then went to pick the mole up to put it under some bushes and out of sight of predators and the little black gentleman bit him! He gently pushed the mole with his well-booted shoe as he staunched the blood from his wound!

Coincidentally another friend yesterday mentioned that her mother had been bought a moleskin coat by her second husband, and had not actually liked it and passed it on to my friend who was a student at the time, and wore it with great panache. When she told me this, I then told her about another story concerning Donald and a mole.

When Donald was a young lad he was a real country boy and went out with game-keepers, farmers and other men, collecting watercress and toads, clearing ditches and ponds, and whether we approve of it or not, hunting and shooting. Donald would go out with an old man who was a mole-catcher, and Donald collected the dead moles from the traps. He must have been about nine or ten and his ambition was to have a moleskin waistcoat, a fine black shiny velvet waistcoat  so he skinned the moles and pinned the skins out on a board  which he kept under his bead (ugh!) Unfortunately for him, his mum, Maudie found them and threw them away. He never forgot the loss of his moleskins and nearly seventy years later he still told the tale in a sorry tone.