Whack a Mole

We are having some odd summer weather in this neck of the woods. Odd in that, instead of the usual "air soup" and triple-digit heat indices Iowans suffer through, we have had some downright pleasant temperatures over the past couple of weeks.

Living in Iowa, we know what to expect. We get brain-melting heat every July and August, and we endure soul-crushing cold every December and January. The years where that doesn't happen are, well, noteworthy to say the least. So far, this has been one of those summers. A week ago we encountered record morning low temps on a couple of days; even after some pretty daunting heat and humidity at the start of this week, the last couple of days have been fantastic; and the weather folks are calling for another cold front to come through the beginning of next week. Highs in the 70s are unheard of for such long stretches of July, let alone lows down into the 50s with dew points to match. It just seems so, un-Midwestern.

Not to mention, what do we have to complain about when the weather is so nice? The official state pastime is usually whining about what the weather is doing, whether it be too hot, too cold, too wet, or too dry. When we have such nice, comfortable weather, what we usually do is think, "We are going to pay for this later..."

After last winter, though - the winter we thought might never end - maybe this is the payoff for living through that? Nah. We're Iowans; there's always worse weather to come.

That said, my latest outdoor endeavor is battling our backyard moles. We have had them on and off ever since we moved into this house in 2002. They don't cause a lot of trouble, just make some tunnels and an occasional pile of dirt; but if you leave them unencumbered, you get brown paths in the grass and an uneven yard. Not that my yard is any neighborhood showcase, mind you - my usual crabgrass and clover explosion is at least green, though, which is better than a sea of dandelions in the spring.

When I first decided to fight those blind digging creatures, I "borrowed" a mole trap from one of our neighbors. He actually gave it to me, I think. I mean, what would you do with a shared mole trap? It was one of those twin-loop kinds, where you press the two loops into the ground in line with the tunnel and the spring trigger is in between.. The mole comes traipsing along his regular tunnel, trips the spring, and the loops snap together, squishing the mole and ending his digging days for good. Well, it worked pretty well. It would trip without catching anything about a third of the time, but the other two-thirds found a dead mole inside the loops.

And then someone stole it. Right out of my back yard. I had it set up along a mole tunnel, and when I went to check on it one day ... gone. Vanished. Come on, who steals a mole trap? So for a few years I would simply stomp down the tunnels and push the dirt hills back down. This actually did coincide with a lessening of mole activity in my yard. I don't know if it was the weather, or lunar cycles, or luck, or what, but for the past several years there hadn't been a lot going on under my backyard.

Just last week, though, an explosion of digging has erupted back there. Big piles of dirty molehills (that I'm not making mountains out of, mind you), and tunnels to and fro. Time to re-energize the campaign. This time I bought myself one of those spike traps - still spring loaded with the trigger on the tunnel, but these traps shoot spikes down into the tunnel when the trigger is tripped. I figure, at least this way the mole is already buried once it goes off, instead of pulling the bugger out of the ground in the loops and figuring out how to dispose of him.

So, my trap has gone off once in three or four days. I don't know if it actually got anybody. I just pulled it back out of the tunnel and moved it to another spot. No action there yet, so either I got the one single mole that was in my yard, or I just haven't been lucky enough to nab another. We will wait and see.

Meanwhile, I have got a big moving job coming up in a couple of weeks, perhaps immediately followed by our usual trip to the Iowa State Fair. Both those things almost guarantee a return to typical Iowa sweltering heat and oppressive humidity. Because that's how we pay for the nice weather we've had the past two weeks, dontcha know?