Jun 13, 2018 3 min read

Memorial Day has come and gone, and though it’s officially still spring, it sure feels like summer. It seems we went from a never-ending winter straight to blazing hot temperatures and just skipped right over spring this year.

I’ve been hard at work out in the yard for several weeks now along with my neighbors, using lawnmowers, weed whackers and leaf blowers. I had to remind myself that it was just now June and that it was OK if I hadn’t gotten all of the hedges trimmed, the grub treatment down and the propane hooked up to the grill in addition to mowing, fertilizing and attacking the weeds. It has been nice, however, to enjoy sitting on the porch for breakfast or dinner al fresco in the warm temperatures and sunshine.

Last year, I mimicked the shenanigans of Bill Murray’s groundskeeper character in Caddyshack trying to combat both a mouse in my house and moles who were ravaging my yard. The mole holes and collapsed portions of the lawn got to be so bad that I nearly broke an ankle every time I cut the grass. I tried every solution, and some of you were very kind to write and offer tips. There were poisonous gummy worms to bury and the gopher gassers, which looked like big firecrackers that smoke out those little rascals. Some wrote in with a tip to mix baking soda with peanut butter and roll into tasty little balls that you drop into the mole holes. Apparently they can’t digest the baking soda and can’t resist the peanut butter. One person told me a similar solution is to bury spearmint chewing gum in the holes. I’m picturing that either they must try to swallow the gum or else they get tangled up and enmeshed in the sticky wad and can’t get free.

This spring, I was inspecting the lawn and was stunned to find a deep, wide hole dug by some nefarious beast right in front of the living room window. Imagine the nerve! That was the last straw. I set off some gopher gassers once again, filled in the holes and plugged them solidly. Then, I thought I’d annoy them so much that they have to leave my property. Rather than blaring Irish bar music or Yanni or heavy metal so loudly they’d have to surrender, I stuck sonic spikes around the yard. These clever little inventions run on battery and emit an underground beep every 15 seconds. In theory, the sound drives rodents nuts and they pack up and leave. It’s been a few weeks and so far, there are no signs of new mole holes. I did find one small indentation in the same spot out front, but I think the culprit is a squirrel I saw burying nuts. He was staring at me on the porch the other day.

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.