Gas Pains

Tom grew up in Milwaukee, bartended in Wauwatosa in the '70s and moved here in 1984.

Commentary, observations and musings about the outdoors, life in general and maybe Tosa politics and personalities will be the order of the day. He savors a lively debate as much as terrific cooking.

Phil's Revenge

Critters, Critters, Gardening

My nemesis - Phil the groundhog - has returned and has taken-up residence in my septic mound up-north.

Why a large rodent would wish to reside in someone else's sewage drain field is beyond me.  Perhaps the really nice sand and gravel strata and proximity to the garden counter the negative attributes?

I dunno.

Sure - you laugh.  But this is serious business.  An industrious groundhog can quite possibly compromise the integrity of a perfectly functioning waste water treatment system.

And in the process he has begun to dine upon my cabbages.

So far Phil has defied eviction by mothballs and an ammonia-soaked towel.  He apparently is impervious to enormous firecrackers thrown down the hole.  If you fill the hole he simply excavates it when you aren't looking.  He is wary of the live trap as well.

He has even crept to the entrance of his den and given my wife the stink-eye with his beady little eyes. 

And he waited to do this when she was unarmed!

Hey!  Woodchucks are a protected species in Wisconsin!  If your wife shoots that varmint she would be a violator!  That would be scandalous!

Gentle reader.  There is an exemption that allows landowners in Wisconsin, without a small game license and subject to all other restrictions except seasons, to hunt or trap on their property for woodchucks year-round.  If my wife were to shoot that with her pistole she would probably want to make a hat from it that she could wear to Packer games.

And I would have to find a recipe.

My son-in-law said he'd be happy to fill the hole with a sack of QUIKRETE®.

I gave him the hairy eyeball.

Short of posting myself for hours on-end with a rifle has anybody got any ideas?

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