Groundhogs

I am going to go ahead and do a post about ridiculous decisions made by someone not me--namely, my father. As many of you know, my father has had a vegetable garden every summer for approximately 25 years. He loves his vegetable garden. But when we moved to Pittsburgh, he discovered that our property was already inhabited by a family groundhogs, led by a dastardly cunning patriarch.  Each winter my father spends plotting in his study how to take down the groundhog, and each summer he carefully implements his new clever plan and by each autumn he retreats, a defeated man.  Every year for the last ten years the war between my father and the groundhog has escalated, and this past summer, I think we can all agree my father went a little mental.  I was receiving extremely disturbing text messages and emails and even phone calls from him several times  a week, and I would like to post just a few of the emails my father sent to me over the course of the summer:



The war against the GH has begun. I have made the first move with an ineffective, pre-emptive strike on his home. I filled it with dirt after stuffing sticker bush thorns in the hole and then covered it with a cinder block. I was pissed the next day to find that he just dug around the cinder block (I didn't think of that) and made his entrance a bit wider. I have removed the cinder block and strategically placed a trap just outside the entrance. I put a pretzel (one of those large ones) and some lettuce in the trap. So far, he has only covered the trap with the dirt that I had stuffed in the entrance of his home. I am feeling relatively safe because I have protected the garden with the electric fence. But I'm also worried because the fence sometimes turns off intermittently. I am wondering if GH knows enough about electricity that he is grounding the fence before strolling through it. In the meantime, I am looking for some gourmet recipes for serving him should he slip into the trap. I'll be picking up some treats for him at the strip tomorrow that I will place in the trap. I can only hope that he goes for it.
 

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The groundhog is still at large.  On Saturday morning, the trap was closed, but no groundhog. I bought a cucumber and a head of lettuce  for him, but it's Monday morning and there is no sign of him other than the rather large entrance to his home. I stuffed some more stickers, rocks and other debris at the entrance, but he just removed them. I may go out and buy some fire crackers and throw them down the hole.  The hole is not near Mom's plants, so, if I blow up the hole, it may go undetected. He is digging through the solid cement I filled his hole with. He must have a special jack hammer or something to do that, as I am finding chunks of the broken cement next to his hole as he continues to make progress.  

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I bought a bag of concrete and poured it down the ground hog's hole. I thought that maybe I had turned him into a fossil so that generations from now, archeologists could see what the gardeners of today had to face. But, no such luck. Yesterday I saw that he had come back and had tried to get into his house when, alas, the entrance was blocked. He thought he could just dig a new hole, but, when he tried, he hit what seemed like a cement wall. And then, he realized, it was a cement wall. I don't know if he has given up, but for now, I see no sign of him. I suspect that he will come back with a few friends and find a way around the cement, but, if he does, I will just buy more cement until the entire hill side is covered with cement. I also added another layer of electric fence so that there are now two wires: one is 6 inches above ground and the other is 12 inches above ground. I accidentally touched the fence with my shoe while also touching the chain link fence. Now I know that the electric fence is working. I won't be doing that again for a while, I hope. At least I didn't have the urination problem that the one guy had.

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As you know, the groundhog family lives in a cave on the hillside behind the house. I have tried numerous times to evict them, but they refuse to leave. I have filled the door to their cave with the shale and other debris surrounding its opening. But each time they have dug it out and have made the entrance even grander than before. I have put a trap next to the entrance of their home and have filled it with lettuce, cucumbers. bread, crackers,chocolate and any other goodies that I thought would attract them into the trap. But they would not enter. Instead, they filled the trap with the stones and other debris that I had used to block the entrance to their cave. So, a few weeks ago, I bought cement mix and dumped it into the hole. I then poured water on it figuring it would seep down and harden the mix in the hole. But it backfired. The water only seeped down a few inches. So, instead of blocking the entrance, I reinforced the roof with cement. I could hear the groundhog laughing at me as he dug his way back to his home. 

 

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I have another thief in the garden. It seems that the ground hog has gotten other rodent friends to join his party. Now, also Alvin, Simon, Ted, Chip, Dale, and others are stealing what does not belong to them. I actually had a beautiful yellow tomato that should be picked today. But, it was bitten into on Monday morning. And by Tuesday morning, every tomato, green or not, was picked from the plants. I would suspect Gus, or Phil, but the ground hogs would not have crossed the electric fence so easily. And it is not their Modus Operandi (MO). They would have taken a bite from each tomato and left the rest. However, there is no sign that a tomato ever existed on these vines. I have no proof that the crime has been committed. It's just my word against their squeaks... If I could even find them. I am now going to war against the ground hogs AND the chipmunks.

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I saw the ground hog face to face (or, more accurately, face to tail). Rachel noticed some flowers moving on the hillside sometime on Saturday. I ran out to find the largest ground hog I have ever seen--the grand daddy of all ground hogs. He realized immediately that this would not be a friendly meeting. So, he quickly ran across the hillside. I don't know where he went because he just disappeared. I am looking all over for his hole, but it must be cleverly disguised. Or, he has mastered the ability to disappear into a space-time warp that has an opening somewhere on the hillside. I haven't seen him since Saturday.

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Maybe if I can keep the dog at the top of the hill, mom won't notice it for a while. Or, I could just buy one of those Japanese robotic dogs. I'd put him on a leash and have him patrol the garden--after reprogramming him to bite anything with four legs.  I just mail ordered a controller board to start building my robot. It should arrive this week.