A Lifer with a story. A fellow worker from me lives near Alphen aan de Rijn ( about an hours drive from were we work ) and ask me for some time if I knew what a "Peat mole" was. He knows me well and knows that I know a little about animals and indeed I knew what he ment with "Peat mole". This is the dutch name ( actualy veenmol ) of the European mole cricket.
I told him I do know them but never had seen one alive and he told me that in his area the species is at the moment a plague and his neighbor had this year already killed more then 300 of them !
Afther I told him I had never seen one alive and would love to see one he promised me to ask his neighbor to catch some living specimens and take them for me to work.
Today he did and after taking a lot of photos of the 3 specimens I gave them to a person near Tilburg who cooperate with a Nature-education centre and maybe they could place them on display.
The Mole cricket is actualy a rare species in the Netherlands and found only in surtain areas in which it seems however to become more and more common now-a-days but because of the damage they can cause in gardens and the loud song they produce, not everybody is happy they become more common.
