Premeditated Mole Murd*r
*** Do NOT read this blog entry if seeing pictures of a dead mole would be unpleasant for you!***
So allow me to start this post with the simple understanding of…. I do not like hurting/killing animals!
I like fishing but I hate the idea of placing worms on a hook or even worse… pulling a hook out of a live fish.
I’ve never gone hunting, I don’t plan on going hunting and in general, I don’t want my food to look like it did while it was alive (e.g. a roasted whole pig or fried fish with it’s head still on).
With that said, I have nothing against hunting in general, and I’m definitely not saying I’m a vegan or anything of that sort haha
Now… where do I begin?
Up until about the 24th year of my life, the idea of “cutting grass” was nothing more than a “chore” or a “responsibility”. I had to do it because I wouldn’t get an allowance or something to that effect while I was a kid. When I became an adult, the task of cutting the grass was now a responsibility to ensure the city didn’t send out a fine for an unkept yard and I didn’t want my father to do it when I was living at home for free while I was in college.
So what changed you might ask?
The Craftsman
675 Series
Briggs & Stratton
Power Propelled 22” Deck Lawn Mower!
“This is my lawn mower. There are many like it, but this one is mine.”
This was not only the first lawn mower that I personally purchased, it was my first “outdoor power equipment” purchase!
**Side note, I still own her and she still runs like a champ over 10 years later! Her name is “Little Betsy” and if you’re curious why that’s her name, she wasn’t given her name until after I got “Big Bertha”, which is my riding lawn mower. Simply put… I just gave her a name that started with the same first letter of Bertha and put little in front of it haha**
Anyway… back to my story….
I had always pushed one of my father’s lawn mowers and to be transparent, I don’t know if my father ever spent the money on a “new” lawn mower. I think he always bought them used and fixed them up. Nothing wrong with that, but I wanted something “new” and I wanted something that would push itself so I didn’t have to work as hard!
The idea of something “new” and something “easier” wasn’t the original motivation of the purchase. I was young, I had energy and strength to push an old lawn mower across the yard, so why would I want to spend $300+ on a lawn mower?
Answer:
I worked at Sears and sold Craftsman like there was no tomorrow!
I don’t want this blog entry to have so many offshoot topics so I’ll try to keep this story short lol….
I worked at Sears for a short season while I was starting my small business in computer repairs and I became obsessed with Craftsman. Yes, I admit, Craftsman quality is not like it used to be many years ago, but I grew up in a time when Sears still mailed out catalogs and something about those childhood memories tied to Sears/Craftsman makes me happy, so… I buy Craftsman and if you don’t like it, you can get over it because I also buy Klein Tools and DeWalt!
Back to my point… While working at Sears, I was usually stationed in Lawn & Garden and Sporting Goods/Fitness. After selling tons of Craftsman Lawn products to customers, the allure of having a self-propelled lawn mower became a thing lol
So what did I do? I bought one, duhhh!
The color scheme (Red & Black) of my lawn mower is just like the car I got back in college (which I still own almost 20 years later! I just don’t drive it when it rains because my aftermarket cold-air intake rests in the bumper cavity without a hydroshield or bypass valve (0_o) …. Hydrolock is a real thing…that’s how I lost my first car…)
Man my tangents just keep coming!
I loved Little Betsy from the first time I started her up, pulled the self-propelled lever and felt her pull me across the yard! I was in some type of euphoria that I still can’t explain. It was like something went off in my head/heart where I was like…. “ I want to make this grass look just as magnificent as I feel pushing this new lawn mower!”
And that’s how it all started!
I went and bought myself a Craftsman Gas Trimmer (still got that too, though it needs some maintenance on it) and I made my yard look the best that it could with what I had!
Where am I going with all this and why on earth is the title of this blog entry about murdering a mole?!
While I was maintaining the yard of the house I grew up in, my father was making a lush yard of grass at his new home in Hampton. I don’t know if it was because his house was new or if it was because he would come and visit me and see what I was doing with my lawn that it motivated him to keep his lawn beautiful (I’d like to say it was because of me lol) but either way I wanted to lay down in dad’s front yard grass, it was purdy!!!
Let’s fast forward to 2022/2023…
My father was diagnosed with cancer and his beautiful lawn wasn’t that important anymore. I would cut the grass when I could, but working overnight made it difficult because I needed to rest during the early hours of the day just so I could repeat work the next night. This meant I would have to cut the grass at the hottest times of the day during summer. That became too much for me to bear and so we started paying a guy to cut my father’s grass but he wasn’t going to put the same care into the yard that I or my father would, so it just became a “responsibility” again.
This continued throughout my father’s battle with cancer and it wasn’t until maybe a year after my father passed that I started cutting the grass myself again.
It was hard to see what my father’s yard had become, but I knew it was something only I should fix.
Don’t get me wrong, I have gotten help with “treating” the yard but I’m the only one that cuts and manicures my father’s yard.
My brother-in-law started looking into treatment services for his yard and when he pulled the trigger to hire a guy, I also paid for a full year of service for my yard. Josh (The Lawn Doctor) is a nice guy and educated in the field of lawn care but again, I’m just asking for “help”. By next year, I’m hoping to take over the treatment process myself, not only to save some money but to also be able to say, “I completely manage this yard myself in honor of my father!”
The yard treatment began early this year 2026 and I started cutting my grass to get it looking “presentable” and by May/June, my front yard started looking lush!
I say “front yard” because the backyard was getting torn up to heck by a mole and I just didn’t have the energy/time to deal with that… but the mole’s time was coming……
Let’s talk about backyards for a moment, my siblings to be specific.
My first experience with laying a foundation…
This is just a small taste of what happened in their backyard. I couldn’t find the full picture at the time of this post but the best way to describe it is trench warfare! I won’t get into the details of what was going on in this picture because this post is already silly long…. sorry to those actually reading it… but let’s just say they had nothing but dirt in their backyard by the time they were done with construction and having heavy machines drive to the backyard didn’t help the front yard either lol
They ended up getting fresh sod for their yard when it was all said and done and I took on the responsibility of cutting/manicuring the grass. The layout of the grass took some time to get used to and I was nervous to put Big Bertha on the grass because she’s BIG lol So for the first 5-ish months, I just used Little Betsy and learned the patterns of the grass (the grass whisper…. lol jk jk)
Anyway! Long story short, as I mentioned previously, I never took care of the mole(s) in my backyard because of time/resources. I guess after the earth stopped shaking from construction, the mole(s) decided to venture out from my backyard and went to my siblings backyard and then to both of our front yards.
What I found so interesting (or frustrating is a better word) for some reason the mole would leave huge mounds in my siblings yard but not mine.
Doesn’t this look like a pile of horse poop?!? lol
We started seeing these mounds more and more in my siblings yard and that’s when it got personal!
I’m the one that’s cutting and manicuring their yard, and the fact that it was happening in their new yard and not mine was like what the poop!!!!
So I started asking Josh from Lawn Doctor questions, I started asking AI questions, I started looking at deterrents, traps and paid services.
Ultimately it came down to this…. These little boogers are most likely going to come back.
Research showed that they are highly territorial but if you get rid of one, what’s stopping a new one to come in if they realize the original mole is no longer there?
The idea of paying someone to get rid of the mole(s) and then having to do it again when they came back was not ok to my budget. The idea of buying deterrents (that may not even work) and then having to buy it over and over to keep them away, seemed highly annoying and also not ok to my budget. That led me down one option that made me uncomfortable but I had to “man up". That is why I started this whole blog off with the statement…. “ I do not like hurting/killing animals!” followed by the fact that I have never hunted and I don’t plan to lol
That option was to kill the mole directly!
So the premeditation had begun….
I knew of three options:
1) Poisoned worms (apparently the entire reason why moles are present is because they want the worms).
2) Gas
3) Traps (or claws of death as I think of them)
Options 1 and 2 were a big NO because we have puppies and we don’t know what the gas would do to us or our pets if it came out of the ground.
So the Claws of Death became my choice of premeditated mole murder…
***At this point of the blog entry, I would highly suggest you stop reading if you do not want to see my MDK (Murder, Death, Kill) reference to the movie Demolition Man LoL***
Here’s what I bought from Amazon —> Mole Traps
These re-usable metal traps are placed at an active mole tunnel, pressed down by foot to open its claws and are activated when the mole pushes the dirt up from a tunnel. When the dirt hits the lever, the claws clamp together and kill the mole. At this point, you just have to pull the trap out of the dirt, undo the clamp and dump the grass destroyer!
It’s actually really easy once you know where an active tunnel is.
This is not a paid advertisement though I would happily accept donations for suggesting a working product!
I was a bit excited when the package was delivered because I could feel the weight of the traps letting me know they were well constructed! Though I was excited, I was also a bit “blah” because I knew I was going to have to find an active tunnel and shove it down and wait for the mole.
I had two thoughts in my head…
1) Will this actually work and be worth the $40ish I spent on them?
2) I really hope this isn’t gross when I pull the mole out of the ground!
I laid my traps in my siblings yard because they had the most visible damage and I left them there overnight.
nothing….
I was feeling a bit down because I was really hoping to catch the mole(s) and move on with my life lol
I left the traps alone for the first half of the second day but in the afternoon I decided to leave one in my siblings yard and place the other in my front yard.
After I did that, I took a shower, got dressed and pulled my car out of the garage and looked into the yard on my right and to my surprise… My trap was triggered!
I was like, “nahhuhhh! I just moved that trap in my yard less than an hour ago and it triggered?!?!”
I wasn’t sure if it was a mis-trigger because I didn’t push it down hard enough to lock into place properly or maybe I didn’t flatten the ground enough, which could also cause a mis-trigger but when I pulled the trap up, I saw my first dead mole!
I was so excited that I ran to my siblings house only to find out my Kuya wasn’t even home for me to show the dead mole to so I was lovingly turned away by my Ate who def. did not want to see the mole! I felt like a dog or a cat who brought a dead animal home only to be told “eww don’t bring that in here!” LOL
Anyway, let’s just say I didn’t read the instructions completely and I had no clue how to get the clamps open when it wasn’t in the ground… I struggled like crazy to get it open so I could dispose of “Moleku” (A name that my friend Mordecai came up with when I told him the joke my Kuya and I came up with regarding moles fighting in the ground like Dragon Ball Z… I hope to make an AI video to explain this joke one day lol)
I dumped the “body” in the trash and called it a day LOL
I was really praying that was going to be it because moles are territorial and we were hoping there wasn’t more than one mole… we were wrong…
Later that week I started doing some “repair” on my sibling’s yard by flooding the mounds with water to find the entrance and then shoving the dirt back down. I also had to find the tunnels to push them flat so I could watch for further activity.
Then a couple of days later, it happened. I saw raised tunnels, I saw new smaller mounds and I was quietly screaming “NOOOOOO” in my head!
I laid the traps in my siblings yard again, because that’s the yard I was mostly concerned about and again NOTHING…..
A day passes and still not a darn mole caught so finally I decided… I guess I’ll put one trap back in my yard again. Not just anywhere… but literally the same exact location I caught the first one and guess what… less than an hour later I got a second mole!
Ok… So I didn’t tell my family this and if you guys are reading this… I’m sorry, but I’m not stopping, I’ve already tasted the blood of mole murder lol
My second MDK… I actually recorded myself pulling the trap out of the ground and just before I did it, I was explaining that this was the second mole I caught in the same exact tunnel/spot and I pulled the trap out, flipped it around and the next words out of my mouth on the video was…. “Oh my God it’s still alive…. I feel so bad… sorry dude…”
Yeah…. I then proceeded to try to shove the trap back into the ground when I realized I was only causing more pain and so I just left the trap there and walked away…..
I legit was having some light headed, “Oh My, what have I done” kind of thoughts in my head. I can laugh about it now because the action is done but I was legit feeling some type of way about the situation.
After opening my front door, I realized I couldn’t just leave it there. For one, the mole needed to be taken out of its misery and for two, I didn’t want our dogs or the women in my life coming outside and seeing the mole lol
So I shut the front door, walked around my house to the backyard, opened my shed and got my metal shovel. I took the straight edge of my metal shovel, softly said… “Sorry dude” and took the mole “out”.
I won’t describe anything further because I don’t believe it would be appropriate, which is why I did not post the video on this blog lol
Anyway… I felt so bad afterwards that I ended up putting “Diggeta” (Dragon Ball Z reference from my friend again) in his own casket and then placed him in the trash haha
Oh how I wish I could say that was the end of it but nope… a few days later and I noticed tunnel activity AGAIN!
At some point I will learn my lesson but clearly I have not up to this point. I placed the traps in my siblings yard first and got no activity but can you guess what I did later that day?
Yup, I placed both traps in my yard lol
I didn’t get any triggers all day long and then I woke up the next day and looked at my security cameras when I noticed the trap in the same spot triggered!
At this point I just couldn’t believe it. I must have the Mole High Way in my front yard and they just venture out to other yards from my yard lol
I checked my camera recordings and saw the trap triggered around 11pm the night before so I was pretty sure this mole (of which I did not name yet lol) had to be dead, like completely.
I pulled the trap and dumped the body in the trash and moved on.
I am a professional hitman for moles now.
I’m putting it on my LinkedIn…
If you want to hire me, sorry I’m for private hire only for my family HAHA
Ok…for real this post was supposed to be done and online like 3 weeks ago. If it wasn’t for my friend Mordecai (I’m Rigby LOL let’s see if any of my readers get the reference) I prob. wouldn’t have gotten this post out for another month lol
I’m sitting in a cafe with this guy while he is recording his next track and I’m like man… I gotta step my game up!
So here’s to one more post and let’s hope I can do this weekly instead of almost monthly haha
Until my next post!
God Bless!
