Caught Red-Handed in the Red Cabbage

While i'm in the vegetable garden, i see a dark shadow dart near my new red cabbage plants. I freeze. A vole peeks out from under a nearby foxglove's skirt of velvety leaves, dashes through the fence, and grabs the lowest leaf off the red cabbage. It drags the palm-sized leaf through the fence back to its hiding place. I hope that's enough for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

A nearby cabbage has 7 leaves. The plant that the vole is de-limbing has 3 leaves remaining.

I feel generous. I'm not going to eat those lower leaves. The vole raider can have it, as long as it leaves the stem for me. How high can a vole reach anyway?

Maybe that's the strategy: Buy plants that are taller than 5-inch long voles.

The Buddha says:

With one's wealth collected justly,
won through one's own efforts,
one shares both food and drink
with beings who are in need.

I am rich in cabbage and broccoli plants. And i am sharing my food with a vole-being who needs to feed her babies.