Every year we fight the "what's wrong with the lawn now?" thing. Between grubs, moles, fungus, drought, weeds, whatever... it's ALWAYS something. We are forever applying some kind of lawn treatment and running the sprinklers.
Many times I have thought back to my parent's St. Augustine lawn and how they never did ANYTHING to it at all, with the exception of half-hearted mowing by my teenage brother. That grass was always lush and green, with no effort at all.
Have you ever had Voles? I had them one year and you could see their paths barely beneath the surface. I declared war on them and bought several packs of the poison smoke sticks. I had half of a very large lawn dug up following their paths.
i knew that finding the main tunnel, that would be an incline, and probably about 6 feet deep and would lead to their main den, the source of these little vermin that had no regards for my lawns health. They were making babies at an explosive rate. Thinking explosive, reminded me I had one blasting cap left from a job 20 years earlier.
I was very pleased with myself, after 3 hours of following paths, when I found the main tunnel, an incline just as described by the vermin busters extermination manual. I had dug a shallow trench about two feet under my elevated wood floor storage shed, when I found it. I didn't want to do anything to alarm the den, so I carefully pushed down my weapon of vole destruction. It was the blasting cap first with 6 feet of fuse and three sticks of smoke bomb taped above the cap with their fuses taped to the main fuse. I got about 3 feet of that bomb down the hole before it wouldn't go any further. Contrary to popular vermin exterminator belief, they had a bend in the shaft, before the main den.
I lit the fuse and after a mild boom with dirt and rocks, I had mildly tamped in the hole over the bomb, flying out clear over and peppering the neighbors medal shed, I saw the smoke and I knew this was the end of the voles. Then I saw the flames and realized my shed was on fire. Luckily I was able to pull my hose around quickly and soak the underneath of my shed that was 6 inches off the ground. Wouldn't you know it, just at this time, the Fire Chief was dropping by my old retired fireman/paramedic neighbor's for coffee.
After the smoke settled and I stood assessing the damage and mess to clean up, Zek and the Chief looked over the fence, laughing. I never saw the voles again, but it was a long time before the human harassment stopped. I thought when I accepted to be Zeks date for the annual Fireman's Christmas party, that all was long forgotten.
I was in a pencil dress, semi heels, with my hair to perfection and make up done to a profession level. After Zek did the intros, all around, the Chief said, "Don't let this nice looking lady fool you, she is dangerous." I had to set the record straight since the story of my vermin war had evolved into a story of blowing my shed to smithereens, setting it on fire, and doing serious damage to Zeks shed across the fence. Had I known I had a reputation to uphold, I would have worn camouflage clothes, a combat helmet, and combat boots.
