mole mountain
A lot of folks come to the country and are surprised by the surplus of pests they didn’t expect. Bald eagles snatching the pekinese off the porch. Otters snacking on their $2000 pedigree koi. The same otters leaving the leftovers under the house where the rotting carcass of carp would gag about anybody BUT an otter. The coyotes eat the cat, the cat eats the birds, the birds eat the cherries. The deer eat the prized roses and my neighbor behind me – a 2 legged pest – poaches the deer and the occasional stray dog that shows up too. A lot of gunplay out in MY neck of the suburbs.
My neighbors think the garbage eating, begging raccoons are cute as buttons. They feed em dog food like they were pets. The possums don’t seem so cute somehow. Pointy snouts, hairless, tumorous, sharp little teeth. Somehow less than cuddlesome. A few years back we had cougars. 200 pound cats. Jump a 6 foot fence with a lamb wiggling it its jaws like paragliding in a breeze. Easy for a mom to picture little Jimmy instead. Remind you real quick that the country isn’t ONLY golf courses and weed n feed lawns.
But the scourge of the suburbs, the menace of the manicured fescue, the REAL threat to Easy Living, is the wily mole. Burrows up every night thru green perfection and you best believe a mole hill to my neighbors IS a mountain. They shoot at the burrows, dump gasoline and poison into the holes, blow em up, toxify em, trap em, sonic noise em, drown em, irradiate em and finally just stand back and curse em.
In the last great showdown as the sun sets over the sprinkler showered suburbs, the moles will ultimately WIN. I suspect the tunnels all connect in one vast freeway system and their complex civilization has cities and art and language and calendars far beyond our meager comprehension. We’re their slaves, keeping the gardens tilled, the lawns watered, their elaborate canals flowing. And the beauty of it is, we don’t suspect a thing.
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