Getting Rid Of Groundhogs

Sanders: Daddy hated Bermuda grass

Daddy flat out hated some things. He hated drinking. No degrees. A beer twice a year with a pizza? You drank. He hated gambling; he wouldn't even flip for a Coke. And he was way ahead of his time: he hated smoking back when almost everybody smoked.

He hated ground hogs. They weren't a problem when I was young, but by the time he retired, they had multiplied and enjoyed ravishing his garden. And he hated beavers. No matter their long (centuries long) benefits, now they ruined pastures and killed timber. Again, they multiplied.

When I was young, if any sign of beaver appeared, Daddy would get an old trapper friend to get rid of them. It would break his heart to see the upper pasture and Bailey's pasture and the Pierson Place hayfield, all bogs.

And he didn't think much of this Johnson fellow who brought the grass named for him to this country. We never had a huge problem with it, but there was this one spot, near the Reeves place ... When Daddy ran out of something for us to do, and, remember, he was one of the world's great thinkers of something to do, he'd send us over to that spot to pull up the Johnson grass.

But his biggest hate was reserved for (shudder) Bermuda grass, especially this strip between the field and the road. In plowing season, the road stayed covered with dead Bermuda grass, because as we plowed along there, we'd be extra careful to see that none of the grass hung on the plow because if it fell off somewhere else in the field, we'd have another instant patch of Bermuda .

He'd ponder and scheme, lie awake at night planning strategy against his mortal enemy. And he came up with ... the flame throwers.

You had these tanks that you wore on your back. They were filled with coal oil . You pumped them up to the required compression, then turned on the nozzle at the end of a hose and lit it, and Voila! You had a flame thrower, blue flame shooting out for several feet and a sound like a jet engine. I'm surprised I wasn't drafted as a flame thrower specialist .

It was something. You'd see a man and his wife in their mule-drawn wagon coming down the road, the mules beginning to shy, the man probably telling his wife something like, "Don't worry, Gladys, they may be friendly. Just don't make eye contact."

The grass? Loved it! Came back stronger than ever.

How to Get Rid of Groundhogs | HowToVille.com

Also called the woodchuck (and, no, we don’t know how much wood a woodchuck would chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood), the genus is more commonly called “groundhog,” so named because, like a pig, it roots in the earth. We don’t know why some call it “whistlepig,” however, because nowhere has it been recorded that these things can whistle. We do know that the name “woodchuck” is the English corruption of an Indian name for the animal.

The groundhog is a type of marmot, and what marmots are, essentially, are very large squirrels. Squirrels root in the earth to bury acorns for storage. This seldom bothers people because squirrels, having quite small paws, dig only tiny holes. Woodchucks, having large paws, dig big holes, not to bury acorns but to build tunnels to live in, and they will dig them in any relatively flat area, including your lawn. This makes them nuisances to those who prefer having lawns that are un-besmirched by groundhog burrows.Groundhog Facts:Why they’re a Nuisance

Some more things that make groundhogs unwelcome:

* They love to eat vegetation, and that includes vegetation that the owner of the groundhog-besmirched lawn has planted for their eating and/or viewing pleasure

* Their tunnels are rather extensive and complex, having many entrances and emergency exits; if a web of tunnels extends under a structure’s foundation, they can crack, weaken, or even sink it.

* A horse or other large animal can break a leg from stepping in a groundhog hole.

Hunting, you would think, would keep groundhog populations in check. It doesn’t, any more than it keeps the deer population in check. These rodents reproduce faster than marksmen could possibly eliminate them, and hunting, as a sport, has declined in popularity over the past few decades. Besides, if you’re going to hunt something, why not hunt something you can eat?

Not that you can’t eat groundhog. Apparently it was pretty common to be served at rural dinner tables back in the 19th Century, and people in the Ozarks and Appalachia still eat squirrel, a cousin of the groundhog. But groundhogs hibernate in the winter; therefore, much of its body’s bulk is food stored away in the form of fat, making the creature rather greasy eating. Besides, they’re also cousins of the rat, and in western society, there is a taboo against eating rats.

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