My neighbor’s dog (Angus) is a miniature golden Labradoodle, which is not a breed of dog, but rather a cross between a golden labrador retriever and a poodle. Angus, a very intelligent young dog, is a great escape artist. He systematically probes the weak spots in his owner’s small picket fence and tests the soil underneath the stakes to see if it has “digging ability.” It is not so much that he wants something outside the fence, nor that he feels compelled to leave the enclosure. Rather, he sees the fence as an impediment to his free will. It would have been a huge advantage for the Allied POWs in the movie “The Great Escape”, with the exception that they would turn themselves in to the camp guards instead of fleeing to England. For Angus, it’s the challenge of digging, and the escapement is simply a short-lived victory, a measure of his performance.
Until recently, my neighbor couldn’t understand why Angus would occasionally dig a hole in the center of his backyard. Why in the center and not on the perimeter? My wife and I saw why. Angus crossed the green grass twenty feet from the pickets and moved the Earth like a steam shovel! The earth flew two meters behind him as he dug. Clearly, he wanted to get to something quickly. Sometimes he stuck his head deep into the hole and pulled it out covered with earth, which it shook. So, he got something. It was a mole! Angus had heard or sniffed the living submarine without a bath from the lawn. He had intercepted it while it was moving in a tunnel more than a meter deep! Now my neighbor says he will be a rich man because his dog, Angus, is a real Mole Hound!
Homeowners will pay a lot of money to get the Earth-moving moles out of their yard. Most pest control companies will just sell you some kind of guillotine that is supposed to immobilize or decapitate you as you run through a tunnel, but that doesn’t work. Maybe all moles are French, because they won’t go anywhere near a guillotine. Instead, they dig a new tunnel to avoid the trap. Some people believe that Juicy Fruit gum can be partially chewed and the soft gum put into the mole tunnels where the moles will be chewed to death. But that doesn’t work either. By the way, don’t follow a dentist’s advice on how to get rid of moles from your garden.
I am thinking that my neighbor could charge $ 25 per captured / dispatched mole and that he could charge another $ 200 to return his clients’ freshly dug grass to mole hound status. What you think? # TAG1writer.
