Varmints

Funny how time flies when you're having fun. I try to get a post into this blog at least once a week and don't always succeed. Too much fun. This weekend I spent some time pulling weeds off our whale grave. A whale grave is a septic mound, in case you didn't know. I got the term from my brother, who is pretty full of these folkisms. When you have a septic system and your soil is clay (or solid rock, I suppose) you need a big pile of gravel covered with dirt to have a place to drain. When you can, you put the mound downhill from the house, but if not, they put a pump in the septic tank. They make those pumps very durable. Ours is nearly 20 years old with nary a hiccup. Anyway. Varmints. Three or so years ago we seeded the mound with wildflowers, and if you walk through this micro-meadow, you'll find a wide variety of flora, but one variety is a poor addition to the patch. It grows tall, spreads by sending out shoots from its roots, and never actually produces a noticeable flower; it just looks like it's about to bloom. Meanwhile it shades out all the competition. So I'm trying to pull the stuff out so the nice plants can grow. The mound has thousands of these, so it's a job getting rid of them. We have some gum trees starting up, too, and I need to dig those out, and one honeysuckle—or chokecherry, I'm not sure—that has to come out, too. I don't want big deep roots in my whale grave. So these bad plants are varmint number one. I was merrily pulling away when I stumbled upon a woodchuck hole! I had seen the guy earlier in the weekend; now I know where one of his openings is. I'm not sure, but I suspect I really don't want woodchuck tunnels in my whale grave. Coincidentally, someone put a post on a list called Freecycle (it's a list in which you can post things you have to give away, and things you need. It's a national organization—Google it) asking to borrow a "humane animal trap." It seems they had a woodchuck in their garden. Well, I happen to have a Hav-a-hart trap, and here's what I wrote to them:

We have a hav-a-hart you can borrow, but it won't work. Woodchucks are vegetarians and the earth is, in effect, covered with food, so they nave no reason to go into a trap. Unless you can position it so he has to run into it when he exits his burrow. You'll need barricades so he has to go in, not around or over. Of course to do that, you need to find BOTH entrances to his burrow, and catch him inside. Then you set the trap while guarding the other entrance to be sure he doesn't go out the back way, then make a ruckus by that back entrance. This ruckus has to be something rather drastic, to make him prefer escape to the security of his burrow. Something like fill the burrow with water from your hose, or ignite a smoke bomb, sold at many hardware stores. Oh yes--barricade (weighted boards) the entrance you are creating the ruckus at so he can't run out between your legs. They're fast! Anyway, you can certainly borrow ours, as long as you return it after you give up and shoot the critter. :-)

That pretty well sums up the situation. I plan to plug up both openings and gas my fellow. End of varmint number two. So anyway, I was digging at the roots of one of the trees, and I stirred up a hornets nest! Varmint number three. They were about an inch and a half long, entirely black, and trailed two legs when they flew. I got only one sting, on my ankle (that's how I found out about the nest), but my entire foot is swollen. Actually, by today it's going down, but my left shoe was pretty tight yesterday. Three varmints is enough for anybody.