I collected her. The buildings that sat there for ten years empty have been torn down. There are stacks of "I" beams next to the edge of the lot and trucks are parked on the property, so a structure is going back up soon. They have already bulldozed brush over all of the A/C I had set up there except two pieces, and she was found under one of the two.



I have her set up with a nesting box, offered her a fuzzy but she refused...could be either she is too gravid to eat or she just doesn't recognize the lab raised rodent...moles can be picky.



This is my second time around with gravid moles from this spot. I found the pair below from the same spot in 2006. The babies can be so difficult and frustrating to work with that I ended up getting two onto mice and sent them to Mike P in NY and released the rest in 2006. I have five more years of husbandry experience and am more patient now, so I am hopeful I can establish a small colony of these guys. I am sure I will be reaching out to the people on here for advice at some point.



For now, I gave her plenty of vermiculite in a big hide for her to dig in and made it drier than I would for a typical nesting box, as I always find moles in xeric habitat. Will watch her closely and switch it to dirt (from the locale where I found her) if she shows any issues related to the vermiculite.



I'm open to any suggestions. I have kept moles off and on since 2003. They can survive and feed on newspaper or aspen, but tend to go off feed frequently...not sure if they just "need" to burrow in dirt. They will take lab rodents, but are off and on. They aggressively eat worm snakes and skinks, but nobody can offer those consistently.



Let the fun begin...

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