Braided Tail, Mouse (or Vole) Bookmark Craft

A shy little mole 

lived in a hole 

and was lonesome by night and by day 

'til a spry little vole 

tumbled into the hole

and said, "Oh, how nice.  May I stay?"

-excerpt from "The Courtship of the Mole and the Vole" from Thunderboom! Poems for Everyone by Charlotte Pomerantz.

When we moved to our rental house, last summer, we had to rescue a baby bunny from the girls' window well.

 We thought at first it was a snowshoe hare, but realized later it (and the hundreds of others around town) was a mountain cottontail.

 We have one that visits the yard of our new house regularly, too.  So, when the girls heard a scratching at their window this time, they were expecting a bunny - but were surprised by a mouse, at least we thought it was mouse (the same mouse - I'm hoping, that I spotted in the garden, and the one that skittered across the phone guy's shoe, while he was hooking up our Internet).  Only, on closer inspection, I'd have to say our little visitor (relocated by the Man of the House to a nearby field) was not a mouse...

...but a vole (with a rounded nose, and in-set ears).  Which of course, has led us on a day of searching out books from our boxes with a sentence or two about the little guys, and crafting a quick bookmark to keep our place in each book, as we look for more.

I think these might be cute bookmarks for when we reread Mouse and the Motorcycle (which naturally, we'll have to now).

I've seen mouse bookmarks with long tails for the bookmark part, and I've seen mouse crafts made out of hearts before.  Our bookmarks are just a combination of the two.

We cut medium to smallish sized hearts out of flattened cereal boxes, using the crease that was already in the box, as the center of our hearts.

Since we were making voles, and not mice, we rounded the tip of the heart/nose of the vole.

 Then, we folded the crease backwards...

...glued the printed sides closed...

...and drew on little beady eyes, inset ears, and twitchy noses (some of us opted for whiskers, too).

All that was left then, was to poke a hole at the back...

..to thread through...

 ...two long pieces of yarn...

...which could be divided into three...

 ...to be braided and tied off...

...into a long tail; a tail that is too long for a vole...

 ...but just right for a bookmark.

And, I'm happy to say one fact we learned about voles today, is that they don't usually like to live in houses. 

Phew!