Ain't Nothing But a Groundhog
OK, I am back again. Last night my wife reminded me that I hadn't posted a blog since early June. I am like the writing equivalent of a cicada. My prose comes out of the ground once every seven years, makes some commotion, then flies away and dies. It doesn't help that she and I are the only ones who read my stuff. It is not like an audience is swooning for more. Hey I have been busy, I'm ADD and I am not fully appreciated for my insight by the masses which makes me feel neglected and resentful, thus sapping my creative juices. It is a terrible cycle and bind...unproductive and unappreciated. Unappreciated and unproductive...and so on and so on.
This summer's garden lesson was the battle versus the groundhog species. I lost some battles, won some battles (with the help of my shirtess Rambo bodybuilding neighbor Steve with a 22), and then settled for an uneasy truce/war of attrition of sorts for the rest of the summer.
About mid-summer, I noticed that my veggies inside the fence (more vulnerable to the vermin) were being pulverized by something...either a super rabbit eco-terrorist or something more sinister. Hell, even my brussel sprouts were being annihilated. In my family's garden as a youth, I remembered that the brussel sprouts grew like the vegetable kingdom's version of Orcs...a super species of plant that even the vermin stayed away from like the plague. Frankly, these plants scared me in their terrible beauty. They looked like planes fully loaded with bombs (brussel sprouts) ready to strafe the dinner table like Dresden. Only the weird teen neighbor Mark liked them. OK, he loved them, confirming that he was an odd child with a palate for the dark side.
In my great wisdom now, I recognize that brussel sprouts are the perfect Jungian archetype of "taste like garbage/good for you" foodstuff. So, I planned to have a summer rich in brussel sprouts. A cornucopia of nutrition--I planned to choke them down like horse pills. Alas, it was not to be. Something was attacking them and killing them. This was premeditated murder in the first degree...assassins. I re-fortified the fence like the Berlin Wall, creating a a fence before the fence, and constructed a higher fence on top of the fence that was flimsy enough to not give a solid footing to climbing creatures but strong enough to resist encroachment.
My back of the house neighbor Ron one day sauntered over and said "Hey, Eric, do you know that you have a groundhog back in your garden?" A groundhog? That makes perfect sense!. That explains why my barriers are not working. The F*ckers are burrowing under my fence and then molesting and destroying my vegetables like killer angels with cravings. I planned a counter-attack. I saw that they had dug under the shed, traveled ten or so feet, and entered the garden like a group of bussed and waddling fat tourists who descend on the food like ravenous beasts at an "all you can eat" restaurant here in Lancaster County
I purchased one of those trap-door box-like wire traps and dropped it inside the fence and awaited the prey. The hunter was now the hunted. I put in some lettuce and corn on the cob left over from the 4th of July. I checked the trap for days...nothing. I went back to the web and searched for a more compelling bait, one that couldn't be resisted by the groundhog. Apples was the word, groundhogs can't resist apples, powerless.
All the while, I was concerned that I had no way to kill the creature in the possibility that I actually caught him/her. So, I filled a 75 gallon trash can with water, the plan????...to drown the beast. Visions of a thrashing drowning animal inside of a cage...drowning to death somewhat freaked me out but I didn't know what else to do until my wife suggested the neighbor Steve who looks like Adonis, is stocked with weaponry, and detests groundhogs (they trash his bird feeders). A perfect pro bono hitman. Steve gleefully accepted the charge and agreed to check the trap while I was in Boston.
So, back to the story, I went to the store and bought some Granny Smith apples...I thought that the sweet and tart flavor would be the most seductive. I carefully sliced the apples into quarters and cut out the seeds. I placed them outside the trap first and then placed them one-by-one in a line leading into the trap. I thought for sure that it was a perfect plan. A good trap, a perfect bait, and a neighbor on call just itching to kill an animal that he despises. The apples would be the proverbial final meal before execution. The groundhog dies happy, a win-win.
I came back from work one afternoon and noticed that the apples were all eaten but one. No groundhog in sight...but one apple quarter jammed under the step that triggers the trap door. It wedged under the step perfectly, keeping the trap door aloft. Groundhog 1, Bierker 0. I cut some more apples and put Steve/Rambo on high alert...high alert...the deathwatch commenced. I warned the neighbors with young children that a hit job was coming...I tasted victory...it was just a matter of time.
That night my cell phone rang...it was Steve, breathless. Fresh off the kill. He thought I had already left for Boston when in fact I was upstairs on my computer. He had come over with his gun and saw the groundhog in the trap, apparently somber and reflective, pondering what went wrong. Bam, splat. Groundhog's lead erased like from a grand slam at the bottom of the 9th by a batter on the home team. Game over, dead groundhog with a paunch of apples no doubt still in its cheeks (wound up being a her) like a wad of chewing tobacco. Now spread eagled in the back of Steve's truck, deader than a doorknob (doesn't something first need to be living before it dies??...living doorknobs...a weird thought). Steve snapped a photo on his Blackberry and send it to me via e-mail (a picture that I never got) and we cackled in victory.
As the summer progressed, the vegetables outside of the fence, supposedly veggies that groundhogs don't enjoy--tomatoes and peppers--became fodder for a bigger groundhog (probably dad) and two little ones (motherless, no doubt, from our execution). Joining the parade of consumers, was (according to Ron) an albino skunk. The veggies inside the fence never bounced back and the veggies outside of the fence became a foraging site for my friends. I didn't want to set the trap outside of the fence fearing that I'd get the skunk or trap my neighbors roving cat who I call "fat boy" because he is terribly obese.
The rest of the summer turned out to be one where we had enough tomatoes and peppers, the animals had their fill, and we co-existed. Que sera, sera.
This summer's garden lesson was the battle versus the groundhog species. I lost some battles, won some battles (with the help of my shirtess Rambo bodybuilding neighbor Steve with a 22), and then settled for an uneasy truce/war of attrition of sorts for the rest of the summer.
About mid-summer, I noticed that my veggies inside the fence (more vulnerable to the vermin) were being pulverized by something...either a super rabbit eco-terrorist or something more sinister. Hell, even my brussel sprouts were being annihilated. In my family's garden as a youth, I remembered that the brussel sprouts grew like the vegetable kingdom's version of Orcs...a super species of plant that even the vermin stayed away from like the plague. Frankly, these plants scared me in their terrible beauty. They looked like planes fully loaded with bombs (brussel sprouts) ready to strafe the dinner table like Dresden. Only the weird teen neighbor Mark liked them. OK, he loved them, confirming that he was an odd child with a palate for the dark side.
In my great wisdom now, I recognize that brussel sprouts are the perfect Jungian archetype of "taste like garbage/good for you" foodstuff. So, I planned to have a summer rich in brussel sprouts. A cornucopia of nutrition--I planned to choke them down like horse pills. Alas, it was not to be. Something was attacking them and killing them. This was premeditated murder in the first degree...assassins. I re-fortified the fence like the Berlin Wall, creating a a fence before the fence, and constructed a higher fence on top of the fence that was flimsy enough to not give a solid footing to climbing creatures but strong enough to resist encroachment.
My back of the house neighbor Ron one day sauntered over and said "Hey, Eric, do you know that you have a groundhog back in your garden?" A groundhog? That makes perfect sense!. That explains why my barriers are not working. The F*ckers are burrowing under my fence and then molesting and destroying my vegetables like killer angels with cravings. I planned a counter-attack. I saw that they had dug under the shed, traveled ten or so feet, and entered the garden like a group of bussed and waddling fat tourists who descend on the food like ravenous beasts at an "all you can eat" restaurant here in Lancaster County
I purchased one of those trap-door box-like wire traps and dropped it inside the fence and awaited the prey. The hunter was now the hunted. I put in some lettuce and corn on the cob left over from the 4th of July. I checked the trap for days...nothing. I went back to the web and searched for a more compelling bait, one that couldn't be resisted by the groundhog. Apples was the word, groundhogs can't resist apples, powerless.
All the while, I was concerned that I had no way to kill the creature in the possibility that I actually caught him/her. So, I filled a 75 gallon trash can with water, the plan????...to drown the beast. Visions of a thrashing drowning animal inside of a cage...drowning to death somewhat freaked me out but I didn't know what else to do until my wife suggested the neighbor Steve who looks like Adonis, is stocked with weaponry, and detests groundhogs (they trash his bird feeders). A perfect pro bono hitman. Steve gleefully accepted the charge and agreed to check the trap while I was in Boston.
So, back to the story, I went to the store and bought some Granny Smith apples...I thought that the sweet and tart flavor would be the most seductive. I carefully sliced the apples into quarters and cut out the seeds. I placed them outside the trap first and then placed them one-by-one in a line leading into the trap. I thought for sure that it was a perfect plan. A good trap, a perfect bait, and a neighbor on call just itching to kill an animal that he despises. The apples would be the proverbial final meal before execution. The groundhog dies happy, a win-win.
I came back from work one afternoon and noticed that the apples were all eaten but one. No groundhog in sight...but one apple quarter jammed under the step that triggers the trap door. It wedged under the step perfectly, keeping the trap door aloft. Groundhog 1, Bierker 0. I cut some more apples and put Steve/Rambo on high alert...high alert...the deathwatch commenced. I warned the neighbors with young children that a hit job was coming...I tasted victory...it was just a matter of time.
That night my cell phone rang...it was Steve, breathless. Fresh off the kill. He thought I had already left for Boston when in fact I was upstairs on my computer. He had come over with his gun and saw the groundhog in the trap, apparently somber and reflective, pondering what went wrong. Bam, splat. Groundhog's lead erased like from a grand slam at the bottom of the 9th by a batter on the home team. Game over, dead groundhog with a paunch of apples no doubt still in its cheeks (wound up being a her) like a wad of chewing tobacco. Now spread eagled in the back of Steve's truck, deader than a doorknob (doesn't something first need to be living before it dies??...living doorknobs...a weird thought). Steve snapped a photo on his Blackberry and send it to me via e-mail (a picture that I never got) and we cackled in victory.
As the summer progressed, the vegetables outside of the fence, supposedly veggies that groundhogs don't enjoy--tomatoes and peppers--became fodder for a bigger groundhog (probably dad) and two little ones (motherless, no doubt, from our execution). Joining the parade of consumers, was (according to Ron) an albino skunk. The veggies inside the fence never bounced back and the veggies outside of the fence became a foraging site for my friends. I didn't want to set the trap outside of the fence fearing that I'd get the skunk or trap my neighbors roving cat who I call "fat boy" because he is terribly obese.
The rest of the summer turned out to be one where we had enough tomatoes and peppers, the animals had their fill, and we co-existed. Que sera, sera.
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