During the heat of summer our three labs like to hide out under the deck and judging from the mountain of red clay slowly oozing its way downhill toward the house, they’ve been tunneling again. Last year they started working north and the first hint of their subterranean activity involved sinking pavers off the end of the deck. The wife feared a sinkhole or an old mine but I knew better. “Dogs” said I.
I pulled up the stepping stones that had been placed strategically since turn #3 couldn’t retain grass under the heavy traffic and found the expansion to their summer cottage. Knowing that merely back-filling the hole wouldn’t even slow them down, I made a trip to my local home improvement mecca and loaded up on their broken concrete block and busted Sacrete mix. “You want the broken and ripped stuff?!” It took some explaining but they finally understood and I made off with my deterrent materials at pennies on the dollar. Dumped the blocks and bags in the cave, hosed down the bags so they would harden, and shuttled red clay from the bottom of the bank to fill in the hole.
During the 2009 mining season activity intensified and the tailings (heh) began to really pile up indicating the boys were once again hard at it. The big question: where was the new shaft?
Last week during yard work the wife says, “Is that a gopher hole by the side of the deck?”
“Dogs. Don’t step near it – that may be just a ventilation shaft.”
I started poking the surrounding soil with a shovel handle and opened up quite a cave by the time I knocked the top in.
It’s hard to tell from the image just how deep the hole is so let’s have Moose give it some perspective.
That’s 105 pounds of highly trained earthmover diving for cover.
The boys were a bit surprised to find a new entrance to their digs.
Back to the building materials department. The hourly guy was taken aback at my unusual request to purchase broken block (at a discount of course). “Let me go get my department manager,” he says. When he returned I recognized the manager from last year’s mining purchase. He started chuckling, “Moose at it again?”
“Yep.”
“Which way did they go this time?”
“West.”
“25 cents a piece sound okay?”
“Sure, I’ll take all the broken ones you have.”
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Where are they moving it all to? At least in the Great Escape, the POW’s used hidden pockets in their trousers to spread it out and I just can’t see Moose and the gang wearing pants….
Wow, they are quite determined, aren’t they?
They keep that up and pretty soon your whole yard will be concrete!
We had a neighbor who had a 3 foot trench dug around the inside of his fenced in back yard. He had metal mesh set in the trench and concrete pourded on top of that and SHE (LAB) DUG under the concrete and took off to meet her friends in the middle of the night at the MT. Brook golf course and they tore that up before they were arrested. I do not think there is any way to end it, Sorry.
Great post, very funny. I miss Moose.
What’s the old guy got in his mouth? A hot dog? Never mind, a hot dog would have long since vanished, I’m sure.
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