by John Sleadd
Let it be known throughout the land (on my property at least) that the common mole has been added to the endangered species list. My once-peaceful acre has become a battleground. It is man versus mole. Human intelligence pitted against animal instinct. Modern technology marshaled against primitive rodent behavior. I am determined to claim the victory in the end. Wish me luck.
It began last spring as a gentlemen’s war. The moles pushed up mounds of earth in my orchard lawn; I rinsed the dirt back down the holes with a garden hose. They raised serpentine tunnels in the front yard; I stamped them back down to level with my boots. They dug labyrinths in the back yard beyond the fence and underneath the vegetable garden; I ignored their seemingly harmless activities. That was a mistake. They were digging bunkers.
As the spring progressed I removed the backyard fence and cleared the brush down to our seasonal creek where I excavated a basin for a small pond. With the eye of an artist I surrounded my new pond with boulders and river cobbles, then added flowers and shrubs. My little pond had an island, a trickling waterfall, a fountain, and a lamp post. A raked and leveled, newly seeded lawn lay beside it.
It was by the pond that the gentlemen’s war turned ugly. My freshly sculpted lawn was soon pocked and broken by enemy trenches. The defiling work of those subterranean diggers erupted almost daily. No sooner would I rinse down the mounds and tamp down the tunnels than a fresh destruction would be visited upon my landscape. I resolved to meet this aggression with determined resistance.
First, I purchased traps, ridiculous things in size and expense, which required that enormous holes be dug in my new lawn to set them. The moles simply tunneled around them and piled up new mounds. Next, I tried poison bait. But the moles fasted during their campaign of vandalism. They covered the bait with dirt and doubled their efforts to erect the mother of all mounds on my property. I was close to despair.
Soon I began talking to total strangers about my mole wars. I sought counsel from older men who in their youthful days had battled with moles. Old timers spoke of valiant canines that could beat the moles at own game--by digging them out. Others recommended explosive devices rigged with triggers to blow the moles up. I imagined gaping craters as big as the pond itself in my lawn. Clearly, I needed a plan with less collateral damage.
Next, I tried carbon monoxide poisoning as my mode of attack. I connected a hose to my stinky old riding mower’s muffler and pumped the noisy exhaust into as many holes as I could find. My already-disfigured lawn looked like a geothermal feature at Yellowstone National Park with wisps of caustic smoke belching forth from the earth. Earth worms writhed to the surface in panic. The moles couldn't take the fumes and went packing. It was a thorough routing. The enemy fled in disarray from the field. For a time.
One week later they returned while I was away at a weekend retreat (no, it was not a therapy session for post-traumatic mole-combat stress disorder) and resumed their work with a will. For all I knew they wore little ear plugs and gas masks to mock me.
That’s when I appealed to the Lord God for help. He sent my cat, Dietrich, spirit filled into the fray, who hooked one of the treacherous varmints right out of the ground—a fat one with bulldozer blades for paws. Yes!! It was my intention to give humane treatment to all prisoners of war, but Dietrich inflicted mortal wounds. How sad. The survivors beat another hasty retreat.
Now that winter has set in, all is quiet on the western front. We will fight yet again, I am sure. But I have my cat! Phooey on modern technology. It is animal against animal. May God grant you victory in your own battles.
This story was written in December 0f 1999. Now, seven years later, the pond is so overgrown that I pretty much ignore the moles. 
