From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!rocheste!ritcv!kar
Newsgroups: net.garden
Title: Re: drowning moles
Article-I.D.: ritcv.248
Posted: Sat Apr  2 10:02:13 1983
Received: Tue Apr  5 04:28:49 1983
References: tekchips.179

Re: failure to drown moles

	I'm not so sure about mole holes, but I've tried filling woodchuck 
holes with water to (ahem) flush them out and it never worked.  Upon reading 
your note, I thought about it for the first time and have reached the following
conclusion.

	A woodchuck (or gopher, squirrel, etc.) hole goes quite a ways into
the ground, and counting the "back door", probably has 100 square feet of sur-
face area.  (Certainly mole holes are smaller; that's why I say I don't know
about them above.)  Unless you can pour in water faster than it can be absorbed
by 100 sq. ft. of earth, you will obviously make little progress.  This is cer-
tainly the case with my expeditions, on which I was armed with a 5/8 inch gar-
den hose.  I suspect you'd need a fire hose to make it work.

	My brother-in-law suggests backing your car up to the hole and connec-
ting a hose to the exhaust pipe, the other end of which is stuffed several feet
down the hole.  One then seals the hole with a plug of dirt, and starts the
car.  The best part is the next step:  pour a little chain saw oil into the
carbureator so the exhaust is smoky.  This will tell you where the "back door"
is (as the smoke wafts out), and that is where you wait with your shotgun.

	Regarding the moles:  perhaps the little devils can hold their breaths,
or, more likely, have retreated to high ground elsewhere in their tunnels,
out of the path of your raging torrent.