The heat made him do it.

We haven’t have any rain for a couple of weeks in our area and the heat wave in the last couple of days didn’t help either.  The temperature reached above 90 degrees, plus the humidity, it reminds me of home.  It’s great for the chili peppers, they’re really thriving, but nothing else is.  We use well water here so we have to be more conscious about using water during a drought.  We don’t want to draw mud up into the filter or burn the pump out.  Luckily the flowers in the front yard are mostly self -sown so they are pretty tough.  I haven’t watered them for a while, but they are still happily producing flowers for us and the insects.  They wilt in the afternoon in order to come alive again in the morning.  Vegetables are totally different.  If you don’t water your vegetables well, don’t expect much out of them.  In the middle of a drought and heat wave like this, the vegetable plot is the only one that gets water daily.  The roses will get watered once every couple of days.

I was about to do my daily morning routine before going to work -watering the vegetables – when I saw something moving in the swimming pool.  A little mole.  I didn’t know how or why he got in the pool.  Maybe he was chased by the resident garden snake or just wanted to cool down (though I doubt that last).  Interestingly enough, he was a good swimmer; he even made it to the deep part of the pool and didn’t get his head wet.  As much as he reminded me of my own stupidity last year when I broke my ankle chasing one of his relatives in the garden, I had no intension of letting him drown.  Death by drowning is a horrifying death.  I came close to drowning once in my lifetime when my foot got stuck between the rocks at the waterfalls.  I would never want any life to have to suffer that ordeal.  I fished the little gray guy out.

Saving his life had nothing to do with keeping him on the property.  Yes, he’s a grub grabber but he also eats earthworms and digs tunnels in the garden and under the lawn.  We already have a grub and Japanese beetle patrol with feathers and wings, we don’t need the mole to do the underground stuff.  Relocating him is the option.  He’ll have to be entered into the “Witless Relocation Program” like other arrested rodents.   I put him in an old fish bowl, let him dry himself while I watered the vegetables.  I also let Bill know that we have another POW waiting to be released.  The morning swim gave his fur a new coiffure; a part down the middle of his back.

The little mole looked so beat up.  After being in the bowl for a while he started to sniff around the bowl and scratch himself at intervals.  I guessed the chlorine didn’t get along with his skin.  A nearly blind mole, soaked in chlorinated water, is a good candidate for sympathy.  I gave him a breakfast of a large, healthy earthworm.  I was fascinated at how fast he could eat an earthworm almost twice his length.  I could hear him eating.  The way he devoured the earthworm and the sound of it made the earthworm look sort of delicious in a way.

The swimming mole came to life after breakfast.  He was filled with new found energy and was practicing his high jump afterward, trying to jump out of the fish bowl.  His stubby little legs just weren’t up to the task. Bill took him to the watershed area by the train station after dropping me off and bid him farewell.  Hope he doesn’t go swimming in the reservoir, he’ll not be so lucky next time.