Ok, anyone who’s an avid animal lover, stop reading now.
I myself, love animals, but there has been an exception as of late. Namely, the moles and voles destroying our once pristine back yard. When we moved in the grass was green and lush, the beds undisturbed. But now, the yard is pitted and has dead patches perfectly in the form of a network of underground tunnels! In an effort against using those horrible mole traps that basically slice the animal in half, I bought both a treatment that you spray over the lawn, and one of those stakes that you bury and it sends out a tone and vibration that’s supposed to be annoying to the moles and therefore encourage them to hastily retreat from the yard and never come back. No such luck. They did move from the area I put the stake in, but just over to the other end of the yard; Yes, the only part left that was actually untouched by them!
Grrrrrrr.
So, I went out back the other day to stamp down the mounds of dirt they had pushed up once again, when I saw movement by my foot. I was wearing flimsy flipflops, so I instinctually lifted my foot and put it right back down on the back half of a vole! Yuck! I desperately looked around for something to grab it with, but by the time I looked back down he had dug his way back into the ground. Lucky for him that I was wearing flipflops, and that I was standing on the squishy dirt he had so recently dug up, or he most certainly would have had his back end crushed! I was resigning myself that I was just going to have to go buy some poison or a trap, when my husband stepped in. Literally.
We were sitting at the kitchen table, just chatting after dinner, when Barney suddenly looked out the sliding glass door and casually said, “There’s a mole in the yard” and got up and walked outside. I told him he better grab a pair of gardening gloves or something to grab it with, and he just grinned. I watched with fascination as he scanned the ground and I figured he had gone out there too late, and the mole had already vanished. Suddenly, he raised his leg high in the air, karate kid fashion, and brought his heel down hard into the lawn. I sat, dumbstruck, horrified yet curious as to whether this crude tactic had actually worked. He turned to me and, very pleased with himself said, “Got it!”
I of course had to ask how he could be so sure and he relayed some gruesome description of seeing the movement, knowing which way it was headed, striking perfectly, feeling something under his foot, and then nothing. *wretch*
I told him I didn’t want some dead mole rotting right below the surface of the yard, and asked him to dig it up. Mostly I wanted to see for myself whether or not he actually killed a mole because to be honest, I had my doubts. He dug up the grass and sure enough, there was fur! Now I was expecting a vole because that’s what I had almost crushed beneath my own foot accidentally. A vole, like the size of your thumb. This however, this was a large guinea pig sized thing! He must have died instantly, as there was no breathing and I couldn’t detect a heartbeat by watching closely. Feeling sorry for the fuzzy little thing but so very glad to be rid of it, I dug it out of the ground and tossed it over the fence into the greenspace behind the house.
We’ll see if the destructive activity in the yard dies down, or if Mr. Mole had friends. I’m willing to bet the latter is more likely, but they better watch out, because Barney the mighty mole hunter is on the prowl and deadly accurate.
In the meantime, feel free to post comments about the book in my comments section. I’d love to hear what you thought, and any questions that remain for you, etc. Once again, to those of you who haven’t finished the book, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!!!!!!!