Saturday 25 September 2010

Moles make an unwelcome return

It's a new kind of war; up comes one hill, it is dealt with in a way that my regular readers will know. The hill is levelled with the lawn, spoil used to patch up old holes. Using my fingers, I open up the mole-runs leading in and out of the hill. And then, on the premise that moles, like dogs, are mammals, I let them have a good long sniff of the top mammal round these parts, namely me. By directing a stream of fresh, warm pee into their tunnels, the moles think better of making further excursions into our lawn. The holes are flagged with metal marker poles topped off with empty glass bottles.

The current war looks like it'll be a long one. While one network is rendered inoperative, a new hill pops out further down along the herbaceous border. Vigillance is required, grubby fingers and litres of mineral water with diuretic properties. Since last month, there have been three small-scale incursions under our lawn, each one rebuffed in the manner indicated above.

UPDATE - Sunday morning: This is evidently a hardier company* of moles than the quitters I've dealt with thus far. This bunch is not just going clear off just because a human has been micturating into their tunnels. Overnight, they have patched up and sealed off the above hole with a couple of kilos of soil (left). And created a new molehill 12 metres to the west, in lawn hitherto untroubled by talpine* activity.

The war goes on. I shall have to double and redouble my coffee and mineral water intake. If I do not, the results could be as bad as the attack we had in the summer of 2008 (which looked like this (below):

Those solar-powered beepers proved as useless as all other remedies. Believe me, the best mole-deterrent that I've come across is undiluted human urine, served warm directly into their tunnels.

UPDATE: The answer is to store urine in bulk, rather than doing it piecemeal. In my garage, I have a stash of five-litre bottles formerly used for demineralised water for the iron, now brim-full of my urine. As soon as the first mole hill appears, I let them have it - five, eight, ten bottles, up to 50 litres, over ten gallons - drowning those that fail to escape. This 'pisspocalypse' does the trick. One such deluge, and they're off the lawn for years.

* See entry under 'mole' here. Collective noun: a movement, a labour, a company of moles.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Drink a lot of coffee -- works for me when I'm driving in the mornings.

Aphelion said...

Nasty moles - green tea might help with the production of mole deterrent as well!

Michael Dembinski said...

I shall have to conduct a scientific experiment as to which works best (volume in/time taken to produce/volume out)!

Anonymous said...

Oh no!!!

Our mole and I have a sort of truce this year. I only piss in the holes they make and it only uses the runs it has established. No new mounds only i bit of dirt being pushed up through 2 'legacy' holes. In the past years I bombed them, cyanided (sic)them etc and they just dug more.

Good luck - Bob

basia said...

M: As an escalation tactic, might I suggest increasing your consumption of asparagus? Nasty stuff.
For the sake of your neighbours, I do hope these battle maneuvers are carried out after dark?
::))

Michael Dembinski said...

It's not the neighbours I'm worried about (tree cover), it's the inbound planes. I was caught out on Sunday by an Aer Lingus and an Air Italy flight. What do those foreign visitors make of the odd habit of Poles watering their extensive lawns in such an unconventional manner?