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Invasion of moles in Ireland in 896


Big Bad Voodoo

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Recently I read that in year 896 in Ireland was invasion of wierd moles that eat everything that got in their way.

Does anyone knows anything about it?

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Recently I read that in year 896 in Ireland was invasion of wierd moles that eat everything that got in their way.

Does anyone knows anything about it?

Link? Might be helpful to get a discussion going.

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Pretty sure the Irish would have recognized mice and rats etc. this sounds like it was something else. maybe an unusual plague of insects swept over in a storm. The teeth may have not been teeth but instead mandables (spelling). I know when i first encountered a mole cricket in Australia I was not sure if it was a small mammal or an insect.

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How about voles? I live in Ireland, they're not so uncommon. Still, strange one. I've never heard of it before.

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My looking around the internet shows me that supposedly there are no native Moles in Ireland. The closest thing is the pygmy shrew. I doubt a shrew would cause this damage. I'm going to have to go with either the voles, or the mice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mammals_of_Ireland

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  • 3 weeks later...

Pretty sure the Irish would have recognized mice and rats etc. this sounds like it was something else. maybe an unusual plague of insects swept over in a storm. The teeth may have not been teeth but instead mandables (spelling). I know when i first encountered a mole cricket in Australia I was not sure if it was a small mammal or an insect.

Our jack russel hunts them in our back yard, catches at most 3 a night. Horrible little things.

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Pretty sure the Irish would have recognized mice and rats etc. this sounds like it was something else. maybe an unusual plague of insects swept over in a storm. The teeth may have not been teeth but instead mandables (spelling). I know when i first encountered a mole cricket in Australia I was not sure if it was a small mammal or an insect.

I always recognised mole crickets as insects since I first saw one as a child. Their size is a dead giveaway.

Edited by Orcseeker
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  • 2 weeks later...

Recently I read that in year 896 in Ireland was invasion of wierd moles that eat everything that got in their way.

Does anyone knows anything about it?

I did history in secondary school[high school]. If something like this did happen it wouldve been mentioned in general school history books. As far as memory serves I dont recall anything at all and im quite informed on my countries history. Well at least the oppressed violent side of it anyway.

I could be wrong and we were invaded by weird mole creatures :wacko:

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I read in some book years ago...written by one english historian...

An english historian writing about Irish history that happened in 896, was it you said?

ok. :w00t:

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I myself live in Ireland and ive never heard anything of the sort

i would really like to find out more

I also am from Ireland and have never heard of this story.

It's an odd tale for sure. Possibly the kind of legends and pseudohistory you might expect from medieval 'history' books where miracles attributed to saints the the like are included without question.

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As has been mentioned the invasion of moles is taken from the Annales of Cambriae written around the 10th century and it predominately focuses on events in Wales, although it does mention some events from the rest of the UK and elsewhere.

Online copy of Annals

Info on the Annals

"Bread failed in Ireland. Vermin like moles with two teeth fell from the air and ate everything up; they were driven out by fasting and prayer."

The way the annals are written and the fact they mostly focus on events in Wales means you could also read the above quote as 2 separate events, like so:

In 896

Bread failed in Ireland.

while

(In Wales) Vermin like moles with two teeth fell from the air and ate everything up; they were driven out by fasting and prayer.

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Here in Utah, in 2006 we had a huge population of voles -- small, black rodents that burrow. They were everywhere! Tore up a lot of lawns; my cats probably remember as the most enjoyable summer they had.

In 2000 we had a massive population of Mormon Crickets. No kidding, that's what they're called. Big, ugly black brutes all over the desert. They followed certain paths across the highway, and after a while the cars would leave them as a 20-foot wide black mess on the highway, stinking to high heaven. And because Mormon Crickets are cannibalistic, the mess attracted even more!

The Mormons venerate seagulls because, when the first Mormon settlers arrived, their first crop was beset by Mormon Crickets. Suddenly, so the story goes, flocks of seagulls arrived to eat the crickets. It's viewed as a miracle.

Actually, happens each time there's an overpopulation of Mormon Crickets. Happened in 2000 too, when flocks of seagulls left the Great Salt Lake, local rivers and other lakes to clean up the crickets.

The Mormons claim that until that "miracle" occurred, seagulls had never before been seen in the area. Yeah, right.

Pretty weak "miracle" if you ask me.

But populations flourish from time to time, straining resources and crowding out other native species. People talk about the "balance" of nature. No such thing ... it's more like a roller coaster ride.

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