It seems like all around the country, every area has its own particular types of varmints committed to ruining the landscape; and plenty of Caddy Shack type characters committed to doing in these lawn wrecking, garden eating Al-Qaeda of the underground. As a kid in Connecticut, I remember woodchucks (like Punxatawney Phil); 
and the mess they could make of a hay field. Here in the NW we have moles. No one has ever seen one of these creatures (just kidding---but have you ever actually seen one?) but all night long they raise havoc with the lawns of homes and golf courses. They leave little mounds of dirt everywhere as they excavate miles of tunnels under the lawn. The only recognized method of getting rid of these little creatures is trapping---considered quite difficult. Flooding the tunnels, fumigation have not proven to be effective.
If you want to "try" and get rid of these nuisance pests you should call a licensed pest control company----I have no idea how to do it. I do have to deal with their "work" sometimes though. Like the other day I went to check the compartment that contains the back-flow valve for the property. (I'll do a blog about these devices at another time but just suffice it to say for right now that if you have a lawn irrigation system you most likely have one or are supposed to have one.) Here is what they look like. They are usually behind a cover like pictured on the left, and usually look like the device in the picture on the right.
At this point you are probably wondering what this has to do with moles.
Well, moles like to make their tunnels undetected. What gives them away? The piles of dirt all over the place. What if they had a place to put the dirt?
Very often I will find these compartments or the water meter compartment entirely filled with dirt by these little earth movers. As you can see in the next picture, this is what I saw when I lifted the cover of the compartment pictured (above left).
Holy Moelie!
Where is Bill Murray, alias Carl Spackler, when we need him. In the words of Carl: "I have to laugh, because I've outsmarted even myself. My enemy, my foe, is an animal. In order to conquer the animal, I have to learn to think like an animal. And, whenever possible, to look like one. I've gotta get inside this guy's pelt and crawl around for a few days."
Charles Buell
;)
;)
