Fighting the Groundhog Wars

People have many reasons for planting vegetables. Mine? I just love to see plants growing and then bearing fruits and or bulking up with thick leaves like the cabbages and lettuces. Plus, I get some workout and sweat off my extra blubber in the process. Do I do it for organic reasons? Of course but that's only in the beginning. When I see how scrawny the plants are I run to Home Depot for a package of Miracle Grow!

Gardening involves not only a lot of work (e.g. breaking the ground; removing pebbles, rocks and weeds; building plots; sowing seeds; transplanting seedlings, watering and lots of weeding while waiting for your first harvest. Then there's the myriad decisions to make: what to plant and what to do about garden pests and more. In my yard, the only pests are squirrels, groundhogs, deer and wild turkeys. The only enemy I have to prepare for is the groundhog. That pesky animal has the habit of eating the young leaves of my plants just as the first flowers start coming out! Oh, I forgot to mention - I fenced off a small portion of the yard and that keeps out the deer. Then I put netting around the fenced off area to keep out the squirrels, turkeys and groundhogs. The latter is not deterred by all these countermeasures though. It just digs under the fence and netting. Okay, I put big rocks on the perimeter. Still doesn't work. The critter just pushes away the big rocks so I installed a sonic device that emits ultrasonic sound waves that's supposed to give them painful eardrums.

The groundhog avoids the pain by quickly dashing in, chomping a big mouthful of my beautiful string beans and chayotes and then dashes out through the hole it dug under the heavy rocks. My next step: lay out humane traps. Doesn't work. The groundhog thinks I'm a sucker for being too humane!

Since the groundhog is not on the endangered species list you're allowed to inflict bodily harm on it! He-he-he... I laugh... I'm going to catch you with my fishing rod and then I'll take you to the railroad tracks and.... naaahhh... my grandsons will disown me for that sadistic act! I don't tell them what I do to the groundhogs but they always have a way of finding out. Psychic, maybe? The groundhogs reach out to my grandsons from the compost pile?

My last cue I get from Elmer Fudd! Armed with my .22 pop gun I lay out a trail of food scraps on the grass leading to the compost pile. Then patiently wait in ambush as I watch "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." Just as the prize money goes over $200,000 the terror of my garden peeps from under the tool shed!. I flip the safety off my Elmer Fudd AK and carefully aim. Estimating the distance and the parallax mentally, I raise the cross hairs about an inch and fire.

The critter twitches. One leg straightens out, pushing against a rock. I reload and fire the coup d'grace!

The ground hog turns, falls on its back and twitches some more.

Finally, it goes up to gopher paradise.

The curtain goes down and 2 months later I'm harvesting zucchinis, gourd squash, bitter melons and string beans. Damn, I planted too much. Now I have to give them away.

If only that pesky ground hog had waited for harvest time!