At the beginning of the summer I started noticing small ridges around the woodpile and in the non-grassy areas of our yard. Eventually, small mounds began appearing and increased in size as time went on. Because the burrowing creatures had not violated the sanctity of the lawn, I let them have their way. Right before we went to the beach with Taran and my mother a couple of weeks ago, I noted that they had crossed over the DMZ and burrowed up into the lawn right beside the driveway. I noted to my mother, "They fired the opening salvo. I have no choice now but to crush the resistance."

After we returned from the beach, I dug a hole in the offending spot to set my traps. It was not particularly easy since they chose to surface right by a sprinkler in our underground watering system. Consequently, I had to navigate around the sprinkler, the PVC pipe and the rocks that served as a bed for the pipe. Because of the positioning of the sprinkler, I was unsure of the placement of the second tunnel. I suspect that this failure coupled with the two-day delay to action resulted in a zero body count.

Just when I was ready to pull the traps and fill in the hole, another mound popped up directly in front of the house on the edge of the lawn by a flower bed. I quickly dug up the new mound and was able to find two definite tunnels in which to place the traps.

After a few days of inaction again, I was once again ready to move on to a better spot. Then this weekend I spoke briefly with our neighbor who claimed he had bagged one himself by flooding the sucker until he showed his ugly head above ground. A quick shovel blow evidently finished the job. Thinking that this was the very same critter who had plagued us, I rejoiced to myself and resolved to pull the traps in two days.

On Monday morning I decided to check the traps quickly before heading off to work. One had been tripped! Excitedly I reached for the trap hoping that it wasn't a false alarm. Sure enough, it was time to put another notch in the handle of my shovel! I let out a whoop and ran inside to gloat briefly in front of my family. On my way out I grabbed the digital camera and snapped a couple of pictures. That night I burried him where he died.

Let's just hope we've got 'em all for now.