34) Post script to hornets - les taupes

Along the side of our drive we noticed that there was a fairly plentiful outbreak of mole hills.  Not a complete disaster, but they weren't too good for the new mower I bought.  I mentioned them, somewhat rashly as it turned out, to our frienedly exterminator of hornets (asiatiques).  Needless to say he was also something of a world expert on moles (les taupes).  I assumed there were at least a dozen of the little buggers by the number of mole hills we had.  But how wrong I was.  Apparently they are very territorial and if they had been even two, they would fight (to the death was definitely implied).  Innocently, I asked if he knew what could be done.  He smiled.  When he came back to clear up the dead hornets (and I suspect get a reward in addition to the exorbitant fee he was charging), he said he would deal with it.

Three days later he roared up the drive in his white van, and duly collected the hornet's nest and its, now (thankfully) deceased, and thus no longer dangerous, inhabitants.

 This particular mole we had did seem to be a steroid injecting athlete of extraordinary strength and stamina.  Our ground is very chalky, almost solid rock, and yet this mole just carved through it like a jack hammer through a beach of sand.  Clearly it called for a special remedy.

I was not, however, prepared for the device pulled from the arsenal of weaponry stored in the van.  It was an explosive charge attached to a detonator.  Mr Delsol explained with great enthusiasm how when the mole came to the surface, the hair trigger probe would set off the explosive charge buried in the hole and "BOOM!" (it seems to be the same word in French).

I was not too sure about the idea of blowing up things in the garden, and it was rather unclear how big a stick of dynamite he had buried down this hole.  I asked if you couldn't simply put some poison down the hole.  He looked at me as if I was some sort of poor ignorant English towney who had never set foot outside a city.  He tapped his nose (knowingly).  They would simply smell that he explained, very good sense of smell les taupes.
I was leaning a lot.  Just give me call when you hear the explosion go off and I'll come back to collect the detonator, he suggested matter of factly.

Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.....  We never did hear the explosion.  I guess we were out. Anyway it surely blew away the Geoff Capes of a mole in our garden and hopefully our lawn is now safe from further destruction (until another one moves in to the now vacated territory of La Borde Neuve).