`He made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by other animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, `Up we go! Up we go!' till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight."
If Mole in Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows bore any resemblance to his real-life cousins, his scrabbling and scratching would have left a mound of earth upon the grassy surface on to which his snout emerged. Here in Germany, molehills are everywhere at this time of year - little mounds of earth about 12 inches in diameter and some six inches high. They make a shambles of a cared-for lawn.
Few persons ever see a mole. If you live in Ireland you certainly will not, for the simple reason that there is none, but they thrive in Britain and the rest of Europe. Moles live entirely under ground and mostly on their own, except in the spring when they emerge to seek a mate. They spend most of their uneventful lives, unmindful of day or night, in alternating cycles of work and rest, tunnelling in the soil in search of food.
Part of the moles' subterranean network of tunnels is semi-permanent and used by successive generations, perhaps by many individuals. These do not result in molehills, because the structures already exist and there is no need for further excavation. Branching off from these semi-permanent tunnels, however, are the temporary "hunting galleries", dug out and used only once by a single mole. When it excavates a hunting gallery, the mole expels the debris on to the surface in the form of molehills, just as a builder deposits rubble in a skip outside a house in the course of renovation.
The high number of molehills at this time of year is directly related to the winter weather. A mole has a voracious appetite, eating more than its own weight in food every day, and 90 per cent of its diet comprises earthworms. With the coming of winter the earthworms wisely retreat to deeper soil, a metre or two beneath the surface. The moles must follow, and this increase in tunnelling activity results in more and larger molehills than are common at other times of year. The deeper habitat also has the advantage in winter of being warmer and easier to dig in than the frozen layers of soil in immediate proximity to the surface.