Mole hunting wasn’t something I grew up with but instead learned about in my early twenties. My dad didn’t acquire his acreage until well after I had moved away from home but still only lived a stone’s throw away.
Okay, it was a little farther than a stone’s throw, but when taking into consideration the vast Albertan countryside, it could have been a stone’s throw relatively speaking.
My hometown was a place called Sylvan Lake, but that isn’t what this story is about. Growing up in Sylvan is meant for another tale, another time. Although Dad didn’t purchase the farm until I was in my early twenties, I knew the place well. It had been my grandfather’s property, and Dad bought it when Grandpa passed away.
It was an exciting time for me. I was a young mother with so much energy and ideas bursting at the seams. I wanted to help make up for the insane mental and emotional turmoil I put my parents through when I was a teen.
Those poor bastards . When I say my parents had to deal with a lot of shit from me, I’m not exaggerating. From running away from home at 16 to a midnight move out of an apartment that I could no longer afford because, well, I was a broke-ass teenager with no life skills whatsoever — these people still managed to support and love me through all my failures.
Now, as a 36-year-old woman, I am flabbergasted by the shenanigans that my parents put up with. So it feels like I will be paying the ‘rents back for my adolescent missteps forever.
Here enters mole hunting, later named: Moling.
Dad would sow the fields with alternating crops from one year to the next. The problem was that vermin would often find their way into the areas and dig massive tunnel systems throughout. This caused issues for growing and field work.
It quickly became my job to take out the quad fixed with upwards of 15-mole traps and spend my morning scooting around the expanse of land and setting traps.
I’d arrive at the farm around 10 AM and get right to work. Once I had set the traps, I’d head back to the house for lunch and help dad with any other work he had kicking around. Often enough, that work would be picking rocks out of various fields or hauling logs for the wood-burning stove he had in his shop.
Around 3 PM, I’d set out to seek my catch.
Now, if you are a PETA member or some other animal protection organization, I would suggest you stop reading. Things can get pretty gruesome when it comes to mole hunting. Sometimes the moles would still be half alive with only their back end caught in the traps, and that’s when my cave(wo)man-like survival brain kicked in, and heavy rocks and some good old fashion grit would be employed.
I didn’t particularly appreciate having to kill the moles. I don’t like killing things, period. Not even the beetles that scurry over my kitchen floor. Killing just isn’t my bag. So that’s why, eventually, I realized I needed some Molin’ buddies.
Much in the way a certain Tom Sawyer once smooth-talked Ben Rogers into whitewashing a fence, I, too, managed to convince my pals that catching moles on a crisp fall day was just about the coolest way that a bunch of young 20-somethings could spend their time.
After an entire summer of moling with friends, this activity became a sort of lore in our shared history. To this day, if any one of us in our small group mentions those days of plaid jackets and countless hours spent in fields, we all smile and have a few memories to share.
Mom and Dad hosted my wedding reception (after having been married in Mexico), and guess what the girls and I did while all dressed up in our fancy duds?
You got it; we checked our traps.
Some might say (and probably did at the time) that we were a bunch of bored girls simply looking for attention. Because I can’t deny it, we were posting our moling adventures all over our socials with zero shamefacedness.
But the real truth, that I recognize now as I recount these memories, was that it was a time for us to spend together in an ever-increasingly complicated life. We were trying to hold on to our adolescence for just a little longer. Maybe it was this mole hunting thing that helped us transition from those giggling wayward girls to the women we are now.
After a hard day’s work, we’d grab ourselves a drink while Dad Barbequed steaks and Mom prepared a feast, and we’d have a dip in the dugout just down the road.
Perhaps to the layman, this all sounds a little too country. But at the time, it filled me with a type of togetherness that I will never forget.
Good friends, family and hard, honest work filled my summer that year. Well, maybe the moles wouldn’t have thought it honest, but as any farmer knows, a mole in the field only leads to trouble. Nevertheless, it makes me realize why this sort of bucolic lifestyle is appealing to so many.
I’ve moved away from my Dad’s farm to the city now, and every once in a while, I still find myself pining after those countryside sunsets when we’d sit around a wood-burning stove, talking about the day’s work and planning what tomorrow might bring.
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This post was previously published on it’s just foam.
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