THIS is what we do to rodents who are wrong about the weather.

Since we moved here we've been fighting with groundhogs.  They were hanging out underneath the shed.  We tried trapping them.  No luck.  The dang things wandered around the nicely baited trap but wouldn't go in.  We trapped every raccoon in the park.  They'd be in the trap, peacefully sleeping and waiting for us to let them go. 

We pulled down the shed.

We planted a garden.  I trenched around the garden two feet deep by a foot wide, lined the trench with wire, and put up a fence.

The groundhogs dug next to the retaining wall behind the place.  Left a huge mess in the yard of dirt and debris.  This spring, we found another hole, also next to the retaining wall, giving the groundhog a way out as well as a way in.

About half an hour ago, Julia looked out and saw a groundhog in the yard.  I called out Belle, and she went to work.  She dug that hole out along the wall, first one side, then the other, leaving less and less space for the groundhog to hide.  Finally, she got ahold of it and drug it out of the hole.  I'm too much of a softy to let her kill it, but she shook it around a bit before letting go, and it streaked across the neighbour's yard, Belle in hot pursuit.  When I called her, Belle came back.  Happy as a clam. 

I think the groundhog has been scared out of a life.

I don't have good photo of the groundhog. It--and I!!--moved too fast! But here's it's hind end.

Serves it right for being wrong about the weather.

Early spring my eye.