Growing Organic: Blessed with Blesmols & Moles

Mole and Rat of The Wind in the Willows, as illustrated by Arthur Rackham

Ever since I first came across a suddenly impetuous Mole of The Wind in the Willows, who in the middle of spring-cleaning says, "'Bother!' and 'O blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!'" who pops his head out of his hole and then jeeringly remarks "Onion sauce!" as he bowls over the rabbits who would stand in his way, I have been utterly entranced by him ever since.

I think, if you were to make a personality scale out of which character you identify with from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, it would be most revealing. I'm therefore not sure if I should tell you that Mole, the delightfully baggily furry creature, with a solid muscular body, whose endearingly bare shins are so heart-achingly immortalised in Arthur Rackham's illustrations, shines like a beacon of light in my life. I'm not sure you should know about my tendencies to love the absent-minded professorial skin he inhabits, or know that, quite frankly, all the things I so adore about him and identify with are just, oh, so very Edwardian, darling, except that I don't think the Edwardians awarded each other the appellation 'darling'.

I love Mole for being gullible, trusting, utterly delighted by, and delighting in his friend Rat's genius, even if it shows the workings of his own mind to be just not quite so quick, in fact, not so very quick at all: 

"The Mole fell backwards on the snow from sheer surprise and delight. 'Rat!' he cried in penitence, 'you're a wonder! A real wonder, that's what you are. I see it all now! You argued it out, step by step, in that wise head of yours, from the very moment that I fell and cut my shin, and you looked at the cut, and at once your majestic mind said to itself, "Door-scraper!" And then you turned to and found the very door-scraper that done it! Did you stop there? No. Some people would have been quite satisfied; but not you. Your intellect went on working. "Let me only just find a door-mat," says you to yourself, "and my theory is proved!" And of course you found your door-mat. You're so clever, I believe you could find anything you liked. "Now," says you, "that door exists, as plain as if I saw it. There's nothing else remains to be done but to find it!" Well, I've read about that sort of thing in books, but I've never come across it before in real life. You ought to go where you'll be properly appreciated. You're simply wasted here, among us fellows. If I only had your head, Ratty----'" 

Oh dear. Mole is so utterly quotable, it's just as well his copy is beyond copyright. 

I love Mole for loving HOME:

"Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way!" 

And I simply identify with his feeling that, despite all his travails to reach it, and having found it so much more shabby than he remembered: 

"it was good to think he had this to come back to; this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome."

But you just know this has to be a build-up to something slightly sinister, now don't you? Or what word should I use: tragic is melodramatic, sad is stupid, banal also doesn't work - hmmm ... How do I put it in words, quite simply, that as much as I adore Mole, I loathe the blesmol or mole-rat? Ah, right, maybe I just have.

But then again, the blesmol or Cryptomys hottentotus isn't actually a mole at all, closer to a vole or a gopher, although they are often mistaken for one, which leads to much maligning of the magnificent mole.

Cryptomys hottentotus, the common mole-rat, found throughout South Africa

Moles we subsistence farmers love, they eat small invertebrates, mostly earth-worms, and their tunnels aerate the soil and help with rain capture. They tunnel mostly underground, and have such strong, muscular bodies, should you ever catch them, they pulsate like living warmth in your hands. In fact, my mother dubbed our eldest son, Faran, imvukuzane, the Zulu word for mole since he was such a warm, skinny, active, muscular little critter when young - mind not, not much has changed, though his teeth have gotten bigger. 

Chrysochloridae or the Golden Mole.

Moles I can live with. Except that I don't have to live with them, since the Golden mole species found in Africa are not really moles at all, although they are in all essential areas the same, but apparently they are "taxonomically distinct from true moles". Huh! Whose not to say that we in Africa have the true moles, really, all the rest of just poor imitations, mere shadows upon a screen. But I digress. 

Regardless, here we have on the one hand, a tuber-harvesting mini-monster of a mole-rat, which secretes all of your underground harvests in one of a relatively complex set of burrows (some are set aside for ablution purposes), versus a dear little furry, fubsy creature of the golden mole on the other which does not harm or hinder your vegetables. Except that, if you harm the one, chances are, you will harm the other.

I'm afraid to say that the mole-rat or blesmol is most akin to the American gopher in terms of being remarkably ugly - though we really should not let prejudice in terms of looks stand in the way of an objective assessment. But it certainly does not help its case either. Unlike moles, blesmols are vegetarian, which means they do not leave our bulbs, corms or tubers alone, but worst of all, their underground network of warrens include store-houses, which means their depredations are such that far from sharing a harvest with you, they take the lot. And still expect a bonus at the end. 

My husband Fem, having happily noted the prettily pink sweet potatoes pushing to the surface, went out one day with a large spade and came back with only one potato, and a titchy one at that - the blesmol had nibbled under the surface and then carried all away. Many a capitalist banker has taken their model from a mole. Both work stealthily underground, in the dark, and reap what others have sown. 

Now, while we are prepared to accept attrition with regard to certain food-stuffs, obliteration we take to heart, but our responses to this utterly unfair state of affairs is greatly complicated by my dear husband's very soft heart in that he refuses the old-fashioned, though organic ways of dispensing with their value-subtracting services and is instead investigating owl nests in the area. We'll keep you posted.

In the interim, don't expect to eat organic potatoes at our house - except, possibly, a small punnet of baby ones. Boiled in mint and served hot with butter next to a small green salad. With a serving of blesmol on the side.

It's a jungle in there. The mole rats are thankful for the harvest.