Chapter 217 Destroying the Den

He took the fish outside and killed them. They were seen by Huhu and Xuebing who had just returned home. Mu Xi didn't bother to bury them and just threw them to the two as snacks.

Voles have started to appear near my house. Although I have only found one so far, they are the same as cockroaches. Once you find one, there will never be only one.

Mu Xi: "It's summer now, and the mother mice are pregnant and giving birth to a large number of pups. It's the peak period for them to be active and forage for food."

Zhao Yeqing frowned, "Let's not talk about rice and wheat for now. They are almost harvested, and corn can be harvested soon, but peanuts are not ready yet. We have to wait another 20 days."

Voles are small in size and usually cannot eat corn, wheat and other ears of wheat, but they are very good at digging holes. In spring, they eat the roots of wheat, which are juicy and tender. But once the roots are eaten, the fields will be directly destroyed.

In summer, their targets become plants growing in the fields. Soybeans and peanuts are their targets, and they are difficult to guard against.

Mu Xi rinsed the pottery jar with a stern face, "We can eat the food, but we are afraid of plague."

There is currently no medicine that can control voles, so we can only find ways to control them physically.

There used to be rats in the mountains, and my grandparents would use rat poison or mousetraps.

There is no rat poison, but mouse traps can be used. However, for such large fields, the effect will be minimal.

Zhao Yeqing sighed, "There's nothing we can do. We can only look for their dens around here. We can't leave them on the ridges."

Voles like to build their nests in fields, preferably on ridges.

The fields may be plowed deeply, causing the dens to be destroyed, but this will not happen on the ridges. Building nests on the ridges is not only close to the crops but also very safe.

When I was a child, I saw others destroying vole nests. Dozens to a hundred kilograms of food could be dug out from one vole nest.

She worked hard to grow wheat for several months and only harvested 500 kilograms. This little field mouse could steal one-fifth of her food in just a few visits.

Originally, once the ridge was built, it could be used forever, but now it is estimated that it will have to be flattened and plowed every time, and then built again.

Mu Xi: "It's better to rotate water and land, that's the safest way."

Zhao Yeqing nodded, "Then why not plant the second crop of rice in the original rice fields? Plant it directly in the wheat fields. We just need to build another water inlet."

Water-land rotation means planting crops with water in dry land and using dry land to plant crops in the original paddy fields.

Repeatedly alter the field types so that the voles think it is a poor place to build a nest.

Zhao Yeqing suddenly felt helpless. Being a farmer was not an easy job. There was already a lot of work to do, and when a field mouse came, the workload doubled.

The two men grabbed the rice and started beating it, knocking all the grains into the bucket.

Zhao Yeqing exerted more and more force, as if the rice stalk in his hand was the damn field mouse.

"It would be nice to have a cat so I could let it out to catch mice at night."

As soon as Zhao Yeqing finished speaking, his eyes fixed on two leopards that had just eaten field mice and were licking their paws.

Huhu and Xuebing felt a little uncomfortable with her gaze. They slowly put down their leopard paws and stood there staring at her.

Zhao Yeqing threw away the rice stalks in his hand, walked over and hugged the two leopards by the neck.

Huhu and Xuebing subconsciously slipped out of her arms. Zhao Yeqing stretched out her hand and hugged them tightly in her arms.

"Don't move. Don't go out for the next few days. Go catch mice next to the fields at night."

She pointed her finger at the place where the two voles had just eaten, indicating.

I don’t know if the two understood what she said, but after she finished speaking, Huhu and Xuebing didn’t go out until the afternoon.

At night, Zhao Yeqing saw that the two leopards did not go out to hunt, so he caught two fish from the pond and gave them dinner.

The glutinous rice and rice have been harvested, and the focus of protection is on the corn fields and peanut fields.

At night, the two of them walked to the edge of the field and lay down. Zhao Yeqing knew that they understood what he said, so he turned around and went back to his room to sleep with peace of mind.

The first thing I do when I get up at dawn is to go to the fields to check the situation.

Huhu and Xuebing were sleeping under the small pavilion. Zhao Yeqing walked over quietly, not wanting to wake them up.

When she walked to the side of the peanut field, she knew that these two had definitely made a harvest that night.

Because several of her peanut seedlings were trampled to the ground.

She also discovered a small hole in the peanut field that had not been sealed.

Zhao Yeqing called Mu Xi, who had just finished feeding the livestock, over and said, "Get the shovel!"

The two men dug down towards the hole. When they had dug nearly half a meter deep, the hole gradually collapsed inward, and Mu Xi took out a handful of peanuts from it.

The two leopards had been awakened and were walking over. After Mu Xi shoveled down again, they pounced on them all of a sudden!

Mu Xi was startled, and saw two little voles under his fuzzy paws, which looked like they had just grown fur.

There were not just these two that ran out of the cave, there were about seven or eight. After Huhu picked up these two, he and Xuebing rushed out together to catch other ones.

The moment the field mouse jumped out, Zhao Yeqing felt his hair stand on end. He screamed and ran away for a long distance.

Mu Xi hurriedly continued to dig the shovel, making sure that the hole had been dug to the deepest and there were no fish that had escaped. Then he quickly walked over to comfort Zhao Yeqing.

Zhao Yeqing's face turned pale and his body stiffened. He said with lingering fear:

"A nest of voles came out, it was so scary..."

Mu Xi's hands were a little dirty from digging, so he could only bend his hands and gently stroke her back with his clean wrists. "It's okay, I just dug down to make sure they are all gone. Do you want to come over?"

Zhao Yeqing nodded with a pale face and said angrily, "I want to see how much they stole from me."

In addition to the handful of peanuts that Mu Xi took out at the beginning, there was also a lot of wheat and rice.

"I don't know how these field mice stole it. Could it be that they dug a hole in the original owner's house?"

Zhao Yeqing looked at the large amount of rice and wheat and guessed with a frown.

Mu Xi shook his head. "I checked last night. There is no hole in it. There is nothing wrong with the food in the bag. I guess they stole it when they were drying it after the harvest while we were not paying attention."

Zhao Yeqing: "No matter what, we still have to take precautions and store the dried grain well."

The village here uses aluminum barrels to store grain. Metal barrels are very durable and do not rust as easily as iron and steel.

The thin aluminum barrel will not be bitten by mice and is very light to carry.

Mu Xi filled the peanut field and leveled it. "Tomorrow I will go down the mountain and bring back the aluminum barrels from the village."

Zhao Yeqing thought of the sesame field last year.

"I'll come with you to see if there are any good things left in the fields after the winter."