| Porcupine | Mole | Snail |
| Ξ Poem | Mole Notes | Song ♫ |
old: Moles age quickly, rarely living beyond three years.
dim hole: Moles ordinarily live their entire lives underground, and take pains to ensure that no light enters their homes.
loam: As professional diggers and connoisseurs of worms and grubs, moles naturally prefer soft, fertile soils, although, with their sharp-clawed enormous powerful front paws, they can also dig their way through inhospitable gravels and clays.
lonely: Except during the breeding and brooding seasons, moles are solitary.
blind: Moles don't have to worry about poking or scraping their eyes as they burrow around in the dark, because their eyes are completely covered with skin and fur, as are their ears. While not completely blind (except for a few weeks after birth), moles don't make much use of their eyesight. Instead, they are exquisitely sensitive to touch. In lieu of a face, the star-nosed mole has evolved a unique set of 11 pairs of mobile appendages arranged in a stellar pattern, each covered with of thousands of tiny touch sensors, called Eimer's organs.
maligned for moiling the grounds: Moles are mostly carnivorous, dieting mainly on worms and insects, in pursuit of which these preeminently fossorial creatures dig prolific tunnels, preferentially through such succulent soils as are found in well-kept gardens. In the process, they devour many grubs and insects which are harmful to plants, and do a wonderful job of aerating the soil.
molehills: The underground invertebrates upon which moles feed are commonly most abundant just below the surface of the soil, so that foraging moles often leave behind a crazy trail of ridges thrown up by their subterranean plowing.
mounds: When a mole dig its complex living quarters, usually deep underground in soft soil protected by rocks or tree roots, it dumps the excavated soil in a conical pile surrounding the entrance.
volition … demolition: Often confused with moles because of their similar name, size, furriness, and tunneling habit, voles are nevertheless very different creatures: herbivorous rodents, rather than insectivorous insectivores.
moleskins: Moleskins were renowned for making extremely fine, soft, and supple leather. The unique pile of the mole's fur has no nap, an adaptation permitting the mole to back up or turn around in a tight tunnel without getting stuck.
molasses: Molasses, or treacle, is the syrupy residue produced in the process of refining sugar from sugar cane, shipments of which are often infested with small rodents who thrive on the cane. Moles aren't rodents, don't eat vegetables, and don't venture aboveground anyway, but who knows, maybe an occasional harvest of sugar cane even includes a mole or two accidentally uprooted with the stalks. Okay, I doubt it, but some puns are just too hard to resist.
For more information on moles, see the Wikipedia Mole article.