And yet more about moles...

Below, from The Morville Hours by Katherine Swift. This is the book I am currently reading - and imagine my delight when I came, entirely unexpectedly, across this... (if you are not interested in moles, stop here!).

The moles are on the move again too, heaving up their miniature castles in long Maginot lines across the lawn. When the ground froze in January they retreated deeper underground, following the earthworms. Now, as the soil warms, they abandon their winter quarters and move closer to the surface, spring-cleaning burrows which may have collapsed from disuse, pushing the soil out on to the surface with their broad white palms: fine, dry, friable soil- the best potting compost in the world. Later on in the year the young moles will emerge onto the surface and will live for a time in the outside world, in the air, among the grasses and flowers, looking for new territory of their own;when they find it, they will disappear again into the world beneath the surface - a world they will rarely leave for the rest of their lives. Adult moles are solitary beings, fiercely protective of their territory, each inhabiting its own subterranean world of tunnels and burrows, independent of others. They have underground larders where they store food, nests for sleeping furnished with leaves and dried grasses. They lack for nothing. They have no predators. I can understand Mole's affection for his home in The Wind in the Willows. It is a safe solipsistic universe, in which the senses in general need not be especially acute. But the mole has one sense of almost unimaginable sensitivity: touch. It is through using touch that the mole experiences the underground world. Using its naked snout, the bristles on its face and tail, the fine hairs all over its body which brush against the tunnel walls as it moves, it gathers information not only from contact with solid objects but from such insubstantial sources as changes in temperature and vibrations in the soil and air. The snout in particular is exquisitely sensitive to changes in air pressure, to the slightest draft in the tunnels, the merest movement of air - occasioned perhaps by the distant presence of another creature, by worms dropping into the feeding runs, by the soft fall of soil. In the pitch-darkness of its underground world, the mole can detect solid objects and avoid obstacles merely from the compression waves set up by the movement of its own body.

With sincere and memory-full acknowledgements to Arthur Rackham.