The Mole, by my daughter

It’s finally springtime! The trees are budding, flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, the days are getting longer and warmer, and everything should be beautiful in no time. My backyard looks like an active war-zone, littered with chaotic trenches, wayward tunnels, and shell craters. With two dogs and an avid mole problem, that is the norm for my family.

When I step outside, I have to watch where I am going. If I’m not careful, I could sink down into one of the holes the moles have burrowed, or fall into one of the pits that are just the right depth to break my ankle. Those pits are just some of the feeble attempts my dogs made at catching the vermin. If they could, my dogs would spend every waking hour tearing up my yard tracking the moles. They dig for hours on end, gradually turning my beautiful black and yellow labs into an unrecognizable, chocolate-colored mess. After their five second attention span causes them to lose interest in that particular hole, they roam around the yard for a while, followed by a cloud of dirt. But, as per usual, they will pick up the scent of another mole, and begin their filthy process again.

One day, not too long ago, all their hard and monotonous work paid off. They got one. He was this little brown lump, about the size of a mouse, with these huge, white, paddle-like paws with short, stubby claws. Apparently, that’s what they use to dig those annoying tunnels that go in every imaginable direction.

Moles move very fast, so that’s why my dogs could never catch them. They must have come up with a strategy or something, because at least once a week, they uncover two or more moles. The assassin is my younger dog, Toby. She’s the one who hunts the moles down and kills them. Abby, the older one, just joins in the digging because she’s too old and slow to keep up the chase. When Toby got her first mole, she didn’t try to eat it, as I had expected. She played with it until it stopped screaming. I have never heard a noise like that before in my entire life, let alone coming from something as tiny as a mole. The way Toby killed this mole left me awe-stricken. She grabbed it in her mouth, and kept flipping it up in the air. Both my dogs were trying to grab it out of the air. Sometimes they caught it, and would just fling the poor thing back up. When they missed, it was a mad dash to the carcass, where they’d pounce on it, grab it again, and continue playing their new game. Once Toby, the Great Mole Killer, had had her share of fun, she proudly carried her prize around the yard, showing it off to anyone who was around. After she had made sure that everyone knew of her accomplishment, she dropped the mole and went inside to rest. Since she’s learned how to track and kill the moles, she does it on a regular basis. I make sure I know where her mouth has been before I let her lick my face now.