And so the saga continues. I came face to face with my nemesis today, and as some of you have guessed, it was not a vole like I'd thought, but a juvenile ground hog that was causing all of the damage in the garden - the same one that was trying to find a weakness in the fence this past weekend. Evidently, he found it. All he had to do was scale the chicken wire and squeeze through the 2 x 4 inch wire mesh fencing. I am continually amazed by rabbits, and now groundhogs, and their ability to squeeze their bodies through the tightest of openings. So far, the adult ones have been too lazy to scale the fence.
Anyway, when I got home tonight, I noticed from our dining room window that Mr. Groundhog was helping himself to my soy bean plants in broad daylight without a care in the world. As I ran out of the house, my initial instinct was to grab our kitchen broom, but halfway across the garden, I dropped it and went for my garden fork instead, which was left next to the garden gate. (A heavy shovel would have made more sense but I didn't have time to grab it from the shed.) As I stormed in, Mr. Groundhog just stood there motionless. I guess he didn't know what to make of me either. Then he thought twice and made a break for it. Instinctively, I swung the fork, the back of the tines connecting with his back, rendering him flat on his belly. For a second, I thought I had seriously injured him but he quickly got back up and sat motionless, cornered against the fence.
Mr. Groundhog and I stood there face to face, about three feet from one another, as I tried to muster up the courage to dispatch my toothy enemy. This must have went on for more than five minutes. In that time, Marc wandered out of the house looking mighty horrified and then went back in upon my request. My neighbor tried to offer his encouragement, telling me that the groundhog will destroy the rest of my garden if I let him go. I had no clue about what to do. The problem was, it would have been very difficult to bludgeon him to death with the back of a garden fork. The only sure fire way to get him with one strike was to stab him with it. Both options seemed awfully gruesome. If he had to die, I wanted it to be quick and painless. All I could think of as I stood there was, "oh, what I wouldn't give for a fishing net right now!!!!!!!"
In the end, I just couldn't do it. I'll say it - I'M WEEEEEEEAAAAAK! With some prodding, he darted for the opposite side of the garden and I got a couple of good whacks into his backside before he squeezed himself through the mesh fencing and ran back to his den under the shed. Instantly, I felt regret that I couldn't take care of Mr. Groundhog. But I just couldn't do it. It would be like stabbing a feral cat to death. He also had that cute furry mammal thing going for him.
Anyway, I ran out to Home Depot and bought one of those enormous Havahart traps. I can't help but wonder - did I just blow my one and only opportunity to get rid of Mr. Groundhog? What do I do now?!
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Best title, brilliantly told. Am loving your rodent wars. Groundhog sausage.
ReplyDeleteA woodchuck warren is about 50 feet from my garden. He loves to strip the leaves off of peas and beans, and decimates beets and spinach in their entirety. Like you I have been more generous than I ought to be. If they ate tomato plants, however, I have little doubt about what I would do. And it would involve a large stick of dynamite wrapped in spinach! :)
ReplyDeleteWould either of your dogs (you have two, right?) be up for some small mammal hunting around the backyard? If you are "lucky" enough to duplicate this experience in the future, could you let your dogs in the garden (just temporarily, of course) and hope that they take care of the groundhog? Our dogs are mostly indoor dogs, so they don't have much chance to be out in the backyard, but every chance they get, they sniff around looking for rabbit and mouse trails.
ReplyDeleteI, too, would be squeamish about personally spearing or bludgeoning a small furry mammal, but I can live with having my dogs do the dirty deed.
Next time, have Marc behind a video camera, then post the results. I want to watch the comedy of errors, LOL!
ReplyDeleteWow, drama! Try detaching the chicken wire from the top part of the posts. That way, he'll just fall off if he tries to climb it.
ReplyDeleteI know I'm completely out of order by saying this, but .22 shorts will do the trick; they are quiet and eliminate all the gruesomeness.
ReplyDeleteWhat a story! Thanks for posting it.
Oh crum, a cute furry groundhog. I agree, it's hard to do the dirty deed when faced with a cute furry critter. Good luck with your critter wars. I hope the larger trap catches your nemesis, but then you have to decide what to do with it... (Thank goodness my cat gets the offending bunnies).
ReplyDeleteI agree with Granny....a video would be great! I don't think that I could have stabbed him with a fork either. It's just too gruesome. It's hard enough to shoot them with a 22. Well, now that you where his den is...he should be easier to trap. Keep us posted.
ReplyDeleteIn broad daylight! The nerve of some groundhogs. My neighbor used to play a talk radio station outside - says it kept away the critters. Who knows.
ReplyDeleteI had one come up to my fence yesterday trying to get in. Didn't have time to get my 22; i threw ironite on it. hope it burnt!!
DeleteI have heard doing what Couves said works like a charm. I could not have murdered the creature either. This tale brings back memories of Peter Rabbit in Mr. McGreggor's garden, lol.
ReplyDeleteI bait my big Havahart trap with apple halves and a little peanut butter for groundhogs. I've relocated 7 or 8 of them in the last few years. Happy trapping!
ReplyDeleteWhat a struggle you are having. I hope the groundhog it trapped and relocated soon.
ReplyDeleteAhhhh. From another fellow Massachusetts garden blogger, I feel your pain! Good luck catching it in a trap, ours are too smart now, they only way we got rid of them was with out new Irish Terriers. If you need to borrow them, let me know!
ReplyDeleteThanks for making me laugh first thing this morning. I am so sorry it is at the expense of your garden. TRAPS, the only way.
ReplyDeleteI could not do a stabbing - just too intense for me. I would opt for the trap as well - or would have called for my husband to bring out the 22 and dispatch him humanely for me.
ReplyDeleteIf my neighbor's groundhog comes back again this year, I might have to go out and buy traps. I lost 9/10 squash last year to the dreaded groundhog. So far this year I haven't seen him though there is a good hole under the backyard fence near my garden fence which seems to be obviously a groundhog hole. No incursions into the garden yet though. I hope it stays that way.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that no one that commented said they would have killed him. 200 years ago we probably would have done it without a second thought. Well maybe with the thought of eating groundhog stew. But then our food depended on us to keep it safe from the critters. Now we have the luxury of buying our vegetables. We won't starve if we don't have our gardens. I'm not sure what I would do in that situation. I just hope I'm not faced with it. If it were my dad he would kill it and eat it. If it were my mom, she would open the gate and shoo it out (and not even hurt it at all with the shovel).
Oh Thomas ... I feel your pain. I like to call these encounters with critters "an opportunity for territorial implanting." He knows now this is your territory ... However, in the end groundhogs and gardens cannot coexist. Eagerly awaiting the next installment.
ReplyDeleteThomas, you are turning into a real formidable enemy! LOL a little more training and you can join the SEAL/Special Forces team! I'm picturing your neighbor egging you on like a little voice in your head, sorry to laugh but this is book-worthy! Watch out for birds too, they nab every edamame seedling here if I don't cover them with netting. Once they get their 2nd set of leaves though they leave them alone.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all of your comments everyone.
ReplyDeleteDaphne - you make a great point. My dad (and apparent my retired next door neighbor) would not think twice about killing the groundhog. Then again, my father endured war and famine in Vietnam during his lifetime. Urban/suburban gardeners are presented with quite a dilemma when it comes to dealing with garden pests. One the one hand, it's generally illegal to trap and relocate these animals (I'm assuming because they may end up in someone else's property), and on the other hand, it's probably not the wisest idea to discharge a gun in your suburban backyard.
I couldn't have done it, either.
ReplyDeleteI feel your moral dilemma. I've found myself with a digging fork in hand coming face to face with a vole and I just couldn't do it.
ReplyDeleteI have to say though, square shovels work much better. One whack to stun, another to decapitate. That's the cleanest and most humane way I've been able to do it.
Good luck...
I used a shovel to stun and decapitate a vole a couple of years ago, but I had my husband toss the body out back :)
ReplyDeleteI would say a garden fork would not be my implement of choice with a groundhog. Make sure you have a shovel within reach at all times.
I came home one day last summer and noticed my big beautiful cilantro plants were completely defoliated and almost de-stemmed (not a real word, I'm sure). This was on my elevated back deck. As I looked at the pot with the former cilantro plants, I noticed something was in there..a GROUNDHOG!!!! Actively eating my cilantro!! Top to bottom, holding the stem down so it could reach all of it. I took a video of it before it got spooked. Unreal and very brazen.
LOL, funny story. I remember the day I came face to face with a groundhog, who in broad daylight was casually enjoying one of my black prince tomatoes. I swear he was waiting for me to offer him a drink to go with his meal. I bolted out the door and chased him around the yard but couldn't get close to him. Luckily my neighbour had a trap handy and managed to re-locate the guy a few days later...which in my opinion is a better option then gutting the little guy with a pitch fork!
ReplyDeleteBTW - I thoroughly enjoy this blog!
Hey Thomas,
ReplyDeleteI've just started following your blog right after you commented on my blog entry about my groundhog encounter and find it a bit comforting? that we are having the exact same problem. I'll admit I dispatched my juvenile with a gardn cultivator to the back and a bucket full of water to drown it- it sounds terrible, but I reacted so quickly to the whole situation that I'm blaming it all on instincts. I've gotten one more with my hav-a-hart by setting it right outside a burrow I found near my garden. Even with two down I'm STILL finding other attempts by OTHERS to dig in around my fence... looking for those weak points. Good luck. Don't let them live!
As I was reading your blog I heard a high pitched scream from outside. Half an hour earlier I had set 8 live traps to deal with the turkeys, chickens and ducklings I've been losing nightly and even daily--I lost 2 ducklings to a mink today in broad daylight. I ran out to investigate and found that I caught my first opossum! One less bandit to deal with. It will be meeting the business end of a shovel in just a moment. As for your groundhog, I wouldn't have hesitated to stab it with the fork. This season I've lost produce to deer and lost too many fowl to count to predators. I guess I've been a little hardened in the 2+ years since I started farming. Best of luck to you.
ReplyDeleteWe've lost two clutches of duck eggs that a broody hen was sitting on, only one lone duckling is left. As for trapping groundhogs, I have never been able to do it, even with the largest of Havahart traps. Skunks, Possum, Racoons, no problem - Woodchucks? No. The only way I've had luck is either by removing where they live ( ours liked to live in a big brush pile near the woods), or a .22. I just find some neighborhood hunter to volunteer.
ReplyDeleteOh geez - that post was so suspenseful!! I'm really glad you didn't kill it, but I truly know your pain. In my area, we have prairie dogs, which are much smaller than ground hogs, but are just as destructive. I'd never seen evidence of one in my neighborhood until last year when I started to notice little holes in my back yard and big piles of dirt beside the holes. I wasn't sure what to do because I didn't want to hurt or kill it (they are really, really cute!) - lots of people suggested that I either stick the garden hose down its hole and drown it or that I trap it and bring it out to the country. Luckily neither of these scenarios came true because the cats in my neighborhood quickly learned about the prairie dogs and spent literally hours just sitting outside of the holes waiting - then one day the holes stopped appearing!
ReplyDeleteNot sure what the laws in Massachusetts are for shooting off guns in residential areas.
ReplyDeleteHave you considered electrifying the fence around the garden?
I'm so glad you didn't kill Mr Groundhog. I do sympathize with your plight, I do. Miss Molly and I have been battling for the peas in my garden for four years now. But the groundhogs were there before we were. We all, us gardeners, are actually infringing on their land, and have reduced their food supply, so we'll have to learn to share a little.
ReplyDeleteHopefully, Mr Groundhog will have learnt his lesson, and will stay away. But I really think you try hanging some burlap on part of your fence. I know that burlapping the fence is not the most aesthetic solution, but it does work.
Groundhogs are prey animals, and are very antsy when they do not have a 360'view of their surroundings. Try that before investing in a larger trap. I heard that groundhogs are social animals, so if you trap and move one away, it will try to come back to its den.
mediaOrganic...that is an excellent idea! and one that I would seriously look at if I didn't have a 3 year old. LOL!
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading your blog posts. I have a garden in New Hampshire and one in Maine and have had problems with ground hogs in both gardens. If you decide to use a trap never use it at night or you might well catch a skunk.
ReplyDeleteOne half of us would have killed him in a heartbeat. The other one would have done pretty much what you did, except she'd have stood there and called my name to come solve the dilemma.
ReplyDeleteCoons and groundhogs are to my knowledge the worst things that can happen to a garden short of a plague of locusts.
I love groundhogs, I really do. If I didn't have a garden I'd encourage them to have a colony down near me so I could watch them.
Rabbits haven't really been a problem for us, but if they were, I'd be eating rabbit for dinner.
Of course, I grew up on a farm in really rural NC in the 60s -- killing was something we did weekly (domestic and/or wild).
Use cantaloupe as the bait in the traps. Amazing how much they love it! I heard you are supposed to put a trail to the trap with the cantaloupe and then put some in the back of the trap. The first time we tried it, we just put some in the trap, went away for a couple hours, came back, and a big unhappy woodchuck was there! Of course, even in his distress, he ate ALL the cantaloupe that was in there :) We recently put some deer/rabbit repellent around the plants that the other woodchuck has been dining on and it seem to work wonderfully, however, it just made him move to the other plants that he previously didn't prefer, so now, I'm out zucchini, pumpkin, beans, spinach, winter squash, cucumbers, and more. I'm staying home this weekend and will be diligent about that trap. Trail and all! He will be relocated soon, out near where his sibling is, I hope. GOOD LUCK! If you do try the trap, try the cantaloupe, lots of research said that was the way to go.
ReplyDelete