I have just spent the last half hour crying over the Groundhog posts!!! Good LORD you are one funny man!!!
So in light of that wonderfully bloody post, I was wondering if you would give us an update as to the downfall of the little bastards?
Say, do you think any of the techniques that you developed would be effective on Liberal actors/politicians???
Thanks!!!
Danae
Those Nazi whistlepigs are SEP (Somebody Else’s Problem), if I recall correctly. To the best of my knowledge, Scylla’s an urbanite now.
He even had to leave the sheep behind. 
uh… Link? I don’t wanna miss a funny Scylla post after reading “The Horror of Blimps”…
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=15906
6 Pages and worth every line of code…
My God. He did move. He admitted defeat.
The Evil Nazi Groundhogs won.
Say, Danae, would you happen to have posted something on this MB yet that had nothing to do with politics/left-bashing?
Anyway. IIRC, the reason for Scylla’s move was that his property tax was going to cost in the neighborhood of $5K+. ISTR a thread saying “I would have to cash in my 401K to pay my taxes”. Sumthin like’at.
Yes. I sold the farm. I keep wanting to write about that, but can’t seem to get it done properly. I sold it for a combination of reasons. The property taxes had gone through the roof. It was a money pit anyhow, and it absorbed a lot of my free time maintaining it. We had some very serious problems with trespassers, my wife’s car got shot by a careless hunter, and she was afraid to enjoy the property by herself because she never knew who se’d encounter. There were two ponds on the property, and they were like a magnet for people to trespass.
One time believe it or not, I saw all these lights down by the pond, went down in my truck and there was a band of bikers having a party!
I’d been shot at once by accident. There were problems with wild dogs, and are new neighbors were a horror, with a puppy mill right on the property line causing all kinds of problems.
What clinched it though was that my wife wanted to move. We weren’t true rednecks are Amish so she felt somewhat isolated. It was hard for her with a baby and the schools sucked.
So, I put the farm on the market for a ridiculous amount of money, and we went looking. We found something nice, five acres with a pool and outbuildings in the country but only 2 minutes from my work.
These people from Baltimore fell in love with our farm, and came very much to paying our asking price.
With that money all the hard work reconditioning the farm for the last nine years paid off. We were able to buy this new property on top of a hill, a gorgeous house, for cash. No mortgage.
I usually like to do things myself but we hired this band of crazed Mennonites with a folding moblile piledriver and they fenced in a horse fence and the pool for us in two days. It was quite incredible. They had these ten foot poles with a ten inch diameter and when showing off they could drive one five feet into the ground in a single blow! The ground would shake.
The house we bought is probably just as good an investment as the previous farm. It’s a very desirable property but the previous owners overcustomized and made some bad choices that limited its saleability. It has a bad kitchen and a bad floorplan. Little by little I’ve been doing the work to improve the place.
With the rest of the money I opened one of those 503c College plans for my daughter, and bought a killer BMW for myself, as my old car had been in bad shape since I got it and hit a deer at 60mph a month later. I was overdue, and my wife decided I deserved a present since I was giving up the farm.
We still have groundhogs here, but it’s not the problem it was on the farm. We’re not growing alfalfa.
In fact the problem on the farm was substantially ameliorated when our farmer rotated out of alfalfa. That and a determined hunting spree by myself and the farmer prior to their breeding season reduced them to an occasional nuisance rather than the ubiquitous presence.
We now literally have the greatest neighbor in the world. He’s so great it’s actually a problem, as I have a tough time living up to his standards.
We had to put our farm to dog to sleep. He didn’t make the transition well, and I’d been somewhat irresponsible in the way I dealt with this mutt that just showed up one day. He didn’t like being fenced in. Being very territorial he kept trying to kill the neighbor’s dod, and he started to get aggressive with me.
With a small kid, I couldn’t take the chance, and I put him to sleep. That was the low point of the move.
I’m very happy and have nothing to complain about although the propensity for manly adventure in my new place is much lower than out on the farm, so is the danger. I wrote about it with humor, but I’m a city boy by birth. I’m not good enough with the heavy equiptment nor gifted with abilities or knowledge to operate it safely. I hurt myself and came very close to really killing or doing myself permanent damage several times. It’s scary to think about how dangerous life is when you try to take care of things yourself.
The only other downside is that I pretty much had the farm exactly how I liked it when we moved. It will be several years before I have this place up to my standard.
I have a lot of landscaping to do, a pool relining, I need to build some decking, remodel the kitchen, add some bedrooms upstairs (the previous owners built an addittion and the entire upstairs consists of a single humongous (and I mean humongous bedroom.) You could play basketball in it. The reason we got the house so cheap was partially because of this.
Anybody that buys the place is going to do it to raise a family. They’ll want a good kitchen and more bedrooms upstairs. Once I get it right we could probably sell it for twice what I paid.
But, I hope we stay. I don’t like moving.
Why is this in the Pit anyway? Shouldn’t this kind of thing be in MPSIMS?
I just want to express my appreciation, Scylla for the wonderful Groundhog thread. It gave me great joy.
Thank you Scylla! I wasn’t trying to be nosey… I just wondered, and had to bust up laughing more than a few times, I can relate… We have a few moles, but nothing of the problems that you were having. The Gas bombs that we used in the fall in the front yard were very effective to say the least, but now that it is finally Raining here in Oregon, they are back… Little bastards… There is going to be some serious mole carnage here in a few days. We have a very well established colony in the backyard, I realized how well when I stepped into one of the tunnles to find that it was about 8 or 9 inches in diameter, and had about 4 tunnels that I could clearly see, going off in different directions, hense the cave in when I stepped on it. Thank you again for the laughs! I was wondering, are you a tech writer, or a writer in general? You have a gift my friend!!! I certainly look forward to reading more of your stuff. You should do a short story or two… With 75K lookups on your blimp post ( that has got to be some kind of record…) you could make money off your creativity! 75K reads is SUBSTANTIAL!!! My hat’s off to you!!!
Danae
iampunha, in regards to YOUR post, PBBBBTTTHHHH!!! The truth hurts doesn’t it? 
I forgot to mention Scylla, I am glad that you and your family are happier now!
Danae:)
Danae, as I do not recall being offended/downtrodden by “the truth” in quite some time, I wouldn’t know;)
Hey, you know what they say, “ignorance is Bliss”!!!
Wink wink
Scylla, if and when you ever decide to work on your kitchen, drop me an email. Your posts have been so entertaining I’d consider it more than fair compensation to help you design your new kitchen. You get me field dimensioned drawings and I’ll set you up with floorplans and elevations you can take anywhere.
Scylla -
Nice story. I’d missed the ‘nazi groundhogs’ thread the first time around. Quite amusing. I have several acres of pocket gophers I’ve been unintentionally cultivating as well. I’m glad the new property is working out for you.
So, how come you’re such a grump in GD, if you can be this amusing about gophers?
I just read your thread about nazi groundhogs and it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen! I am kinda curious to know if you tried any of those suggestions that the dopers recommended (in addition to the ones you posted). The red lye seemed to have potential, among others. I know it’s been 3 years so your memory must be hazy by now but I was disappointed to see the mod close the thread before you could tell the rest of your story. I’m assuming you didn’t eventually resort to any scorched earth tactics since you mentioned the groundhogs left with the alfalfa. It seemed like you were getting pretty close though! Please, I need closure on this Scylla. 