I had a moment of deja vu this afternoon. I may have told you the story of Clyde retrieving a mole, the mole squirming round and bit his lip and held on, Clyde screaming the whole of Aberdeenshire down, Gigi coming from nowhere grabbing Mr Moley, squdging it and bringing it back to John!
Well, today, Allez suddenly got up, raced to the utility room door and in his usual fashion jumped up and started to open the lever handle. I pulled him back and opened it a crack to see what he was at and there it was - one ginormous black sleek shiny mole scrabbling about in MY utility room!
I quickly shut the door again to have a think, knowing full well not to go too close or pick it up in case I, Hester or Allez got the same treatment as Clyde had. I gingerly opened the door again, shut it behind me with a very firm and loud STAY to both dogs. Got the sweeping brush which was fortunately handy, opened the outside door and SWEPT the mole outside, and down the steps onto the gravel. The thing then started to dig into the gravel - bloody fast too!
At that point I started to feel sorry for it, it had been through quite a lot of trauma at that stage already, after being retrieved by a cat, dragged in through the catflap, dumped on the cold floor, threatened by a dog, swept by a brush-flailing wumman, but I'm still not daft enough to pick it up - not even in a box - I have seen how fast they move. So, it was back to the brush. I brushed him out of his hole in the gravel and rolled him across the drive and up the little stone verge to the grass under the leylandii.
So in one fell swoop I - saved my dogs from a nasty injury, saved myself from likewise, got the mole outside without harming it, reinstated it into it's home environment, reinforced the dog's 10 minute sit stay, cursed the cat! That Rio is a menace - a mouse in the study last week and a mole in the utility room today - so what next? An elephant in the Lounge?
I do hope he kills it first!
Even moving a dead elephant would be better than moving a live mole!