My neighbor’s dog (Angus) is a miniature golden labradoodle, which is not a breed of dog, but a cross between a golden labrador and a poodle. Angus, a very intelligent young dog, is quite the escapist. Systematically, he probes the weaknesses of his owner’s small picket fence and tests the “digging ability” of the soil beneath the stakes. It’s not so much that he wants something off the fence, or that he feels compelled to get off the fence. Rather, he sees the fence as an impediment to his free will. He would have been a great asset to the Allied POWs in the movie “The Great Escape”, except that he would turn himself in to the camp guards rather than flee to England. For Angus, it’s the challenge of digging and escape is simply a short-lived victory, a measure of his performance.
Until recently, my neighbor couldn’t understand why Angus would occasionally dig a hole in the center of his backyard. Why in the center and not on the perimeter? My wife and I saw why. Angus cut through the green grass, twenty feet from the pickets, and moved the Earth like a power shovel! Dirt flew six feet behind him as he dug. He clearly wanted to get somewhere quickly. He would sometimes stick his head deep into the hole and it would come out covered in dirt, which he would shake off. So, he got something. It was a mole! Angus had heard or smelled the unwashed living submarine on the lawn. He had intercepted Him while he was moving in a tunnel more than a meter deep! Now my neighbor says he’s going to be a rich man because his dog Angus is a real mole hound!
Homeowners will pay big bucks to get soil-turning moles out of their yard. Most pest control companies will just sell you some sort of guillotine that’s supposed to immobilize or decapitate you while you’re running through a tunnel, but that doesn’t work. Maybe all the moles are French, because they won’t go near a guillotine. Instead, they dig a new tunnel to avoid the trap. Some people believe that you can partially chew the Juicy Fruit gum and put the soft gum in the mole tunnels where the moles will chew to death. But, that doesn’t work either. By the way, don’t follow a dentist’s advice on how to remove moles from your garden.
I’m thinking my neighbor could charge $25 per mole caught/dispatched and he could charge another $200 to return his clients’ freshly dug turf to mole dog condition before the hunt. What do you think? #TAG1writer.