Watering Hole, Well Sort Of

Here is a picture of a woodchuck hole. Well, it's there under the water, you'll just have to take my word for it.

Woodchucks typically have 2 or 3 or 4 holes, so, although, this looks bad from the woodchucks perspective it really isn't. Some might surmise that if you fill it's hole with all this water that you've got to have drowned the little bastard. To be honest that thought did pass through my mind but I pushed it out knowing better.

Anyway, this is the hole that I tracked the critters to and was able to see them come and go from. So, when it was time to open my pool an idea came to me, BING! I needed to drop the water level some 3" - 4" inches, which is a lot with a 20' x 40' pool, so out came the garden hose which I ran from the pool to, and down into as far as it would go, the varmints hole. Once in place I connected the hose to the sub pump and turned her on. It ran for well over an hour and the picture is the end result.

Of course this is not the only approach I am using in an effort to eradicate these F'ers. I won't get into details here to protect the innocent. For example, once the water leached into the ground I was still left with a hole, so I took advantage of this and "planted" another varmint in the hole. This particular varmint is said to be an adversary of the woodchuck and even known to kill young woodchucks, so what better place to bury said predator and mourn it's passing...

It's been almost a month now and the hole is still covered. Apparently, the rotting corpse is keeping them from reopening and reusing this particular opening.

Ah, but the story doesn't end there, no way no how, nope! Although, we've not seen the whistle pigs since that tearful afternoon when they decimated our gardens they're presence has been felt. Small indications that they're still around can be noticed if you look close enough. That all changed this past Sunday evening, just before dark when I noticed one of the youngster pigs slowly creep it's way onto the back lawn and into a patch of clover for a bedtime snack. And yes we have clover in our lawn, too much actually. I've been slacking in this department and need to get some lawn feed/weed/insect killer down but that's a story for another day. He was chased off - again, I'm not going to go into details here, suffice to say he took off like a bolt of lighting and prolly with a stinging in his keester. I've also set the Hav-a-heart traps and baited them with some nice, fresh broccoli but they're awfully hard to catch, my experience anyway.

They're still out there, so the battle still wages. Only time will tell who will come out the victor. Of course my money is on me. Who are you betting on?!