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Louise used to be a drama teacher. Now she kills moles
There are only six registered female mole catchers in Britain. Louise Chapman tells Frances Hubbard what the job entails and why she does it
Once, Louise Chapman used to teach English and drama in a secondary school. This morning, instead of force-feeding John Steinbeck to reluctant teenagers, she was walking in the spring sunshine with her terrier, Buddy, at her heels. She saw early primroses blooming in the lee of an oak tree, cirrus clouds in the wide Norfolk sky and she offered a silent thank you, to moles.
Louise is one of a handful of female mole catchers in Britain. This month, she also became the first woman to run the British Traditional Molecatchers’ Register (BTMR), a body dedicated to an ancient countryside skill that is enjoying a decade‑long resurgence.
A humane approach
The use of strychnine to poison moles was outlawed in 2006 and since then there has been a steady rise in demand for professionals who know how to trap and kill the creatures. Traditional catchers, as distinct from some pest controllers, do not use gas, which they feel is both less reliable and less humane. Instead, they use a variety of lethal “scissor” traps that crush a mole’s chest, killing it almost instantly.
Those of us marked by early exposure to The Wind in The Willows can be squeamish about any method of killing Mole. The non‑lethal alternatives encompass sonic repellents and ferret pooh spread liberally underground, as if by some giant predator. Holly leaves, moth balls, garlic and castor oil have also been mooted as deterrents. Sad to report, none of them seems to work.
Louise Chapman sets a trap for a mole (Tony Buckingham)
“Hopeless,” says 47-year-old Louise. “Research shows that moles just dig around an obstacle or temporarily abandon part of their tunnel system, which simply encourages them to dig new runs and create molehills elsewhere.
“You’re trying to outwit fascinating, clever animals. It takes knowledge and respect. I view what I do as the kindest method of control because a correctly set trap is fast and effective. It has the bonus of proving that you've actually caught and killed something. People do like to see a body.”
Louise is a smiley blonde who neatly subverts the ingrained image of the gruff old gamekeeper with string round his trouser bottoms and a row of corpses dangling from his belt. She lives in Norwich but drives 500 miles a week all over Norfolk, in a van bearing the logo “The Lady Mole Catcher” because, she says, “I am a lady. I’m polite. I’m reliable. That’s really my point.”
Probing for victory
At work, she paces out disturbed areas of sward, following the lines of molehills and testing the ground with a metal probe to track the course of the tunnels before setting traps. She works everywhere from parkland to paddocks and I can only report that when we called her in to solve our own problem – 40 hills and counting – she had the culprit within 24 hours.
Sometimes, of course, the moles win. They can kick up stones into traps when they eject earth from their runs and the slightest change in soil temperature is enough to alert them to danger, which is why it is a bad idea to upturn a bucket over any place where you’re hoping to catch one. Louise’s record to date is 27 moles from a five-acre garden.
“Unlike teaching, you’re dealing with people who are actually glad to see you because you’re there to make something that’s bothering them go away,” she says.
Louise drives 500 miles a week in her mole catcher-mobile (Tony Buckingham)
“I meet people who are traumatised by the damage to their gardens. They have invested loads of time and effort into getting beautiful, stripy lawns and suddenly they are looking out on a battle scene. They go away on holiday and come back a fortnight later to a scene from the Somme. It can send them a little bit mad.
“That’s when you hear the stories about tunnels being torched with flame-throwers or filled with fumes piped from car exhausts. One, it usually doesn’t work and two, you risk causing an animal a horrible, lingering death.”
There are fewer than 100 traditional specialists in Britain who make a living purely from Talpa europaea, to give the British mole its Latin name, without deploying other forms of pest control. Only six of those registered by BTMR are women, although two of them have won the “Mole Catcher of the Year” accolade since 2008.
At the risk of crude gender stereotyping, could it be that women are more reluctant than men to kill endearing, furry mammals?
Louise understands a certain ambivalence on that score. She believes in leaving moles be in areas where they cause little disruption, and dislikes trapping females with nursing young in the late spring because it doesn’t seem sporting. Much of the most obvious devastation to gardens is caused in June when those same juveniles are kicked out by their mothers and make shallow practice runs near the surface. But she is not squeamish about killing them humanely when necessary.
Moles are extraordinarily well adapted to life underground and their unending quest for worms and other invertebrates. When they create molehills, they use their paddle-like hands and muscular chests to shift 60 times their body weight of soil, in 20 minutes. Zoologist and mole expert Dr Rob Atkinson compares it to “a man of average size pushing a resistant elephant up out of a sloping tunnel”.
None of which makes the result any prettier when it is sitting in the middle of someone’s vegetable bed. What exactly attracted Louise to her job?
“It isn’t a job. It’s a lifestyle. You’re in charge of your own timetable, you’re out in the fresh air observing the seasons and the changing weather: it can be quite magical to watch a storm roll in from the horizon on a clear day. There’s no stress and I’m endlessly surprised by the people I meet.”
A change of course
Her circuitous route to mole control began with a career at British Telecom. She moved into teaching because she was a single parent and the hours fitted around her son’s holidays. Then, eight years ago, she changed tack again when she renovated an old house and took a course in garden design. As she puts it, “I realised there were a lot of other garden designers, a lot of moles but not many people out there who could deal with them.” She went on to train at Norfolk’s Easton agricultural college.
The founding head of BTMR, Brian Alderton, set up the register in 2007, after the abolition of poisoning led to a rise in the British mole population – the current estimate is 30 million – but a shortage of skilled catchers. The previous reliance on strychnine meant that traditional methods of control had been neglected.
“Ten years ago there was no such thing as a national database,” Alderton says. “It was often a case of tracking down by word of mouth some bloke who barely recognised a computer. Louise is very driven and competent and she’ll continue to shake things up.”
Her plans include courses to educate the public about moles as well as the introduction of standardised qualifications. She wants to modernise the mole catcher’s image and, yes, more women would be good.
Louise has no doubt that she has found her true calling. Well into her dotage, she intends to keep pursuing – and praising – moles.