Teamwork

Sometimes teamwork is the best method for corralling a groundhog. For the past several years we've been plagued with too many groundhogs busily destroying the yard on our 1.25 acre property.  Last year we tried poison worms which didn't help and spinning wheels to scare them away which didn't help either . . . and that's after setting trap after trap which also didn't work. This spring we spread some kind of chemical to kill certain bugs these critters like to eat.  That worked . . . until a few weeks ago when the "runs" and "dirt hills" emerged once again.

This evening while outside with Rudy near our garage the mystery of the varmit began to unravel. First, Rudy saw "him" and started barking incessantly.  I thought he was barking at the neighbor's dog until I saw an animal of some kind standing on its back legs peering out over the flower garden of our rental next door -- some 50 feet away.  It was him, the groundhog, the evil one, the scheming one, the nuisance, the uncatchable one . . . until now. I ran inside the garage and grabbed a hoe wondering whether I would do more damage to myself that the villain I was after. Off I went across the driveway banging the hoe on the pavement to "scare him out."  It was on the neighbor's small alcove porch that I saw him hiding under the grill cover lying on the porch floor. Looking at him I couldn't decide whether he was "friend or foe" as in "raccoon or groundhog," so I knocked on the door and frantically asked Ron what he thought.  While we were discussing the probability of this being a groundhog, he escaped to the yard.  I was fast on his heels as was Ron.

The villain ran round and round and in and out the lilac bushes (probably hoping to make me dizzy) while I yelled something about not thinking I could kill him.  It was then Ron asked for the hoe -- he was ready to accomplish the mission . . . and accomplish it he did.  The rest is history, the groundhog in the trash bin, Rudy rewarded for his superb job of alerting me, the

hoe cleaned off and back in the garage, and me?  I'm very glad I didn't have to do it by myself.

P.S. My husband just came home from work, we looked in the trash bin, he assured me it is a groundhog, and told me it's actually a mole that keeps tearing up our yard. Go figure.