Moles and yellow Jackets

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Our new retaining wall/ stairs

I love Fall. Here in Texas we don't get the pretty turning of the leaves, but fall ushers in a cool breeze otherwise non-existant in the humid summer and oppressive heat. We actually go outside in the fall to play in the yard. This fall we had our retaining wall replaced with sandstone, we added stairs and it looks great. The stairs make easy acess to the trampoline and swingset. I am hoping the wall will help our backyard from eroading too fast; however our bigger lawn problem lies with horrblie roadents, moles. How do you get rid of a mole? Well my Grandfather use to put water down one hole and wait with a shovel at the opposite hole and there you have a real live Whack-a-mole situation. We tried it, but the mole never came out of the hole. It's probably better that way since niether Kit or I would have actually had the guts to kill the poor little thing.

I will tell you what I can kill, Yellow Jackets. One week, Kit was mowing the lawn and he got stung on his ankle. He didn't think it was a flying bug that got him, so we thought it may have been a scorpion. A few weeks later, I was mowing and I got stung on the ankle, I stated to run away screaming for Kit when I got stung again on my butt. thinking it could be a scorpion crawling all over me I pulled down my pants and went toward the front of the house, bear bottomed, to look for Kit. He didn't hear me screaming due to him working with power tools, so I went inside to tell the kids to get him. So far none of my neighbors have admitted to seeing a full moon that Saturday morning.

The armadillo dug out this hole to get to the Yellow jacket nest

We are now in full assault and warfare as we defend the back yard against these stinging pests. The friendly nieghborhood armadillo has joined the cause as an allie, he has dug out the nest and exposed it to my bouts of spraying poison. I am now concerned for armdillos health because of the spray. I hope I don't cause him harm by friendly fire.