by Tammy Looman

While I’ve never been fond of any kind of rodent, last summer I decided that I hated moles. For the majority of my life, I didn’t think about moles at all, or, if I did, my thoughts were those of indifference. That all changed seven years ago when we moved into a new home. Even though the house was new to us, it was built in the 1970’s, evidenced by the quirks and peculiarities we found during the first few weeks after moving. One such quirk started me on the road to mole hating.

At first there was just a strange smell in the basement—the kind that made me wrinkle my nose and frown. The smell seemed stronger near an outside wall. After spending a few evenings trying to discover the source of the smell, I heard a strange scratching from the south facing wall. My fearless husband, Scott, went outside with a flashlight and watched the outer wall while I pounded on the inside. Sure enough, out ran a varmint. But it wasn’t the mouse we were expecting; it was a mole. Soon, we realized that more than one mole lived in our wall; we had a whole family of moles. Scott cut holes in the wall and used a coat hanger as a weapon to chase the moles from their dwelling while I added the necessary jumps and screams. Then we took down paneling and removed the remains of a mole nest. You might think that this experience would have made me hate moles, but I was still naïve. I didn’t realize that this mole experience was only the beginning.

Over the next few years, I watched as my otherwise rational husband slipped into what I call a mole frenzy. Every lump in our yard was viewed as an enemy assault. Scott tried spraying the lawn with dishwasher solution, supposedly to force the moles out of our yard and into our neighbors’ yards. No luck. The moles didn’t leave, and I felt guilty about trying to give our problem to our neighbors. He left two shovels close at hand in the backyard with the idea that we could decapitate the moles as they ran by, but the opportunity never presented itself.

Then one day, I wandered into the back yard to find Scott standing quietly scouting the lawn edges, brandishing his Birkenstock sandal like a weapon.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Don’t go over there,” he said ominously, pointing to a spot in the yard 10 feet from where I was standing.

“Why?” I asked with suspicion.

“I killed a mole,” he replied.

I looked around for mole-decapitating shovel, but didn’t see it.

“With what?” I asked.

“My sandal,” he said.

“You stepped on it?” I asked in disbelief.

“No, I threw my sandal at it and killed it,” he replied with a strange smile on his face.

While I pondered the reasonableness of this answer, he saw another mole scurry across the yard and whipped his other Birkenstock sandal at it with fury. This is why I hate moles—their never ending presence in our yard has turned my mild-mannered husband into a sandal-flinging, mole-hating killer!