{"id":727,"date":"2010-07-21T19:10:08","date_gmt":"2010-07-21T23:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/?p=727"},"modified":"2010-07-22T10:21:40","modified_gmt":"2010-07-22T14:21:40","slug":"theres-a-mole-in-the-bucket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/theres-a-mole-in-the-bucket\/","title":{"rendered":"There’s a mole in the bucket…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There’s a mole in the bucket, dear Jim, dear Jim,<\/p>\n

There’s a mole in the bucket, dear Jim, a mole.<\/p>\n

With what shall I get rid of it, dear Abby, dear Abby,<\/p>\n

With what shall I get rid of it, dear Abby, with what?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In our basement, there is a hole in the cement floor.\u00a0 In that hole in the cement floor, there is a deep plastic kitty litter bucket in which the sump pump once lived.\u00a0 In that deep plastic kitty litter bucket, there are lots of little holes poked through so that water can drain out.\u00a0 And so we dump the water from our dehumidifier down through the hole, the plastic bucket, and the tiny holes.<\/p>\n

Two minutes after Jim left for work this morning, I went merrily down to the basement to empty that very full dehumidifier.\u00a0 And, whistling a happy little tune to myself, while thinking of whole wheat toast with strawberry jam and a steaming cup of tea, I started pouring the water down into the bucket.<\/p>\n

“Hmmmmm,” I thought, “That water in the bottom of the bucket looks pretty murky.\u00a0 Hmmmmm.”\u00a0 So I looked a little more carefully.\u00a0 And screamed, like a girl, then jumped\u00a0 a couple of feet into the air, as I realized that there was a mole in the bottom of the bucket in severe danger of drowning in the sudden deluge of water.\u00a0 Luckily for the mole, my girly panic subsided quickly enough that I stopped pouring the water in, and the\u00a0couple of inches\u00a0of water that were in there quickly drained out, leaving only a very wet and very scared star-nosed\u00a0mole<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What does an animal-loving girl do after finding a mole trapped in her basement, just after her big strong husband has left for work?\u00a0 First she thinks about providing an escape route for the mole – one which does NOT involve human-mole contact –\u00a0and ultimately decides on the admittedly ridiculous solution of putting a yardstick down into the bucket for this\u00a0digging, not climbing, animal.\u00a0 Then she dials 1-800-CALL-DAD and asks the master for advice.\u00a0 Unfortunately, Dad’s advice was wholly practical (“take the bucket out of the hole and dump the mole outside”) and not easily accomplished by a wimp.\u00a0 He was right, of course.\u00a0 But I wasn’t willing to do that – yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So the mole sat in the bucket with the yardstick all day while I was at work, and when I came home it had clearly tried (and failed) to climb that slim slippery piece of wood, since the yardstick had moved significantly.\u00a0 Time for Plan B: I went to our wood pile and found a log that would be long enough, and carefully inserted this log into the bucket without harming the mole.\u00a0 Guess what?\u00a0 Plan B didn’t work, either.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I went back upstairs and contemplated what to do.\u00a0 Should I get some worms from the compost pile to sustain the mole until Jim got home at 8:30?\u00a0 That idea was quickly dismissed as, well, silly and overreactive.\u00a0 So I took a deep breath and went back down to pull the bucket out of the hole in the floor.\u00a0 Only the bucket is fully settled and imbedded in that hole, and wasn’t about to budge.<\/p>\n

Time to come up with Plan C.\u00a0 To help my thinking, I called my trusty dad again, and asked if he had any ideas, which he didn’t.\u00a0 So I ran my crazy idea by him:\u00a0 what if I took the empty 32 ounce Chobani yogurt container from the recycle bin, lowered that plastic tub into the deep bucket using fireplace tongs, tipped the Chobani tub on its side, waited for the mole to climb in, then gently flipped the tub upright and lifted it out of the sump pump bucket into another waiting bucket, using the tongs again…and then carried the mole-filled bucket\u00a0outside?\u00a0 Dad was skeptical, but supportive, and I promised to call him if the plan worked.<\/p>\n

And it DID!!!\u00a0 It was a great feeling carrying that\u00a0bucket outdoors, and tipping it over so that the frantic, terrified, screaming mole could run out and start digging his way back into the ground.\u00a0 I’m sure the mole was psyched to be out of his plastic prison, but I kinda think I was a little bit happier than he was.\u00a0 The wimpy animal lover triumphed!\u00a0 Hooray!!!<\/p>\n

P.S.\u00a0 Mission accomplished while wearing a really cute skirt and ruby red ballet flats.\u00a0 How’s that for girl power?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a mole in the bucket, dear Jim, dear Jim, There’s a mole in the bucket, dear Jim, a mole. With what shall I get rid of it, dear Abby, dear Abby, With what shall I get rid of it, dear Abby, with what? In our basement, there is a hole in the cement floor.\u00a0 … Continue reading There’s a mole in the bucket…<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cats-dogs-plants-animals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":729,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727\/revisions\/729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}