I’m becoming more and more like Bill Murray in Caddyshack. We both wear the idiot expression quite well, and now I have a severe rodent problem in my yard: MOLES. In case you don’t remember the movie, Murray’s character tries unsuccessfully to rid a fancy golf course of a pesky gopher. The gopher survives poison, flooding, and explosives, and at the end of the movie, he celebrates his victory with a sassy little dance to a Kenny Loggins song. Three years ago at Christmas, my mother-in-law bought us the official dancing Caddyshack gopher doll. It’s in my son’s room, so the impudent rodent remains at the forefront of my mind. Thank you for that, Debbie. Until you’ve seen a mechanized gopher doll do jazz hands, you really haven’t lived…in America.
Bill Murray and I are merging into one being.
I’ve been fighting the troublesome moles in my yard for five years now, but I’m still foggy on the the nature of my enemy. Why do they like my lawn and not my neighbors’? How many are there? ‘Cause the tunnels are huge. He/she/the family/the sasquatch burrows through my entire front yard, creating visible mounds and hidden holes, eating plant roots, destroying grass, and making a general mess of things. The battle has taken its toll, including me accidentally poisoning my dog. He lived, thank goodness. I didn’t even know that he had ingested mole poison, but I’ll never forget the aftermath. While we slept through what must have been a horrific night for him, his bowels suddenly released and evacuated with all the mighty power of Zeus himself. We awoke to diarrhea anarchy. A new world order was created — one that required us to get new carpet immediately.
The dog poisoning was an awful accident. However, if you would still like to send hate mail, you should know that in addition to being an incompetent dog owner, I am terrified of cats, which causes me to despise them and mumble hate speech in their direction whenever they come into sight. And I inadvertently killed several goldfish in an unrelated electrocution incident several years ago. If anything, your hate mail should be thorough.
Moles have been the root cause of the dog poisoning, the new carpet expense, the near-death of a tree, the demise of other numerous other plants, and a two-inch strip of sunburn that included the top part of my butt-crack skin. (It was 100 degrees out while I was repairing mole damage, and either I didn’t know that I was exposed, or I was enjoying the refreshing breeze. Are you happy now?)
In past seasons, I’ve fought the moles with a half-assed effort (haha!), much like the U.S. in Vietnam. However, my husband has put an ultimatum on me: rid our yard of the moles, or he will call a professional.
“NO!” I shouted when he threatened the nuclear option. “Don’t call anyone! They will use poison and/or traps and tear up our yard!” And I can do that myself, for FREE.
I’m rigging up the dynamite tonight.
I can relate to the mole problem as we have big mole problem in our neighborhood. However, we have the perfect mole predator living under our roof — our little Jack Russell Terrier, Belle! Sadly, when she kills one of the little critters, she looks for the praise she truly deserves by putting the limp (and sometimes bloody) body on my pillow or in my bed! Not a good thing when your husband goes to bed earlier than you and you go stumbling to get in bed in the dark. :-/