I live on a farm in VA and have finally had to give in and allow someone to come shoot these guys. I quite love them, and have huge respect for the grand daddy, who has lived at this farm longer than I have, surviving total bulldozing of the old garden, complete rebuilding of the old farm house (under which he also used to live) and my 2 Border Collies. Besides, they remind me of my beloved Lhasa Apso who has passed away. HOWEVER, I've been living here for 10 years and starting 2 years ago, the GH (who has since created quite an impressive giant condo complex under a pile of old wood from the old razed barn) finally started annihilating my garden. Despite what some people here have posted I can tell you, they are quite smart & have a keen sense of hearing. GHs live in burrows underground (like a cave). It always has more than one entrance/exit. They generally come out early in the morning and at sunset. I have an entire wire cattle fence, along with electric hot wire all along the entire bottom perimeter of my fence to keep my dogs in (who like to constantly dig under and run away whenever they hear thunder, gun shots or just feel like it!). This hot wire is set for the highest level of shock, and will keep a horse or bull away! This is only 1 foot away from the GH woodpile den. My garden is inside this fence and then inside yet another fence, which is also hot wired at the ground level. Yet, the GHs know full well how to go around the fence, burrow under the fence, whatever. All I know is they have started again eating every tomato I have that starts to ripen and will absolutely take every melon we are growing. And they could care less about my Border Collies who know the word "Ground Hog" and will dive and dig at the hole if you say that to them. The GH just goes somewhere in his condo complex and doesn't give a hoot. I should say though that my 2 dogs are 2 goofy lovebugs and routinely take their balls & toys to the cows and any other critter in hopes they will play, and would never hurt any little critter intentionally (unlike most farm dogs.) If they did encounter the GH, they'd probably offer him a tomato. After years of only seeing the old grand daddy GH, last week I saw him showing the ropes to a little one. Last night my farm tenant came over with a high powered rifle and shot the old guy, but also said he saw another giant one (probably the mom) and a smaller one. There is likely a huge family under there. It made me feel guilty and wistfully sad, but at the end of the day, not only would I be fighting a losing battle of the garden, wild animals carry disease, fleas, ticks with Lyme, if cornered they have huge claws & fangs, and the holes they dig can cause someone (or my dogs or cows) to break their leg. If you are going to try a humane trap (which I did), they are extremely smart and you will have a long wait and will have to create the trap to mimic a hollow den or they are not dumb enough to go into a metal contraption - LOL! I agree with the hunters posting above that if you are going to shoot at it, get someone who knows what they are doing and will kill the animal humanely and put him out cleanly. Shooting at him with a BB gun is cruel, as it will not kill him, just cause wounds, suffering and illness. Hope this helps! Now I'm also on the case of the bunnies, voles and whatever is now eating all my blackberries! ARGH! LOL!!!!

Here's the latest attempt to keep the "fur ball" aka groundhog from eating everything in site. Everyone in the neighborhood thought I was having a party. A friend and I blew up 100 cheap balloons. Strung 3 at a time on a piece of twine and tied them to the chain link fence in the back of the house, especially around the gate where we know the groundhog gets in. Then we put some on the arbor in the front yard in one of my flower beds that has last years WS lupin in it that is getting huge. Mind you it looks crazy out there and I should have taken pics but it was so hot, we where dying out there. I left the hose on all day with the sprayer nozzle off just in case he/she got inside the fenced yard. I was planning to zap him/her with the jet spray. OK thought if I did it enough, it would learn. Then we waited all day and no sign of the critter around the plants. Neighbor across the street called and said he was in the veggie garden eating away and he scared him off. Now this veggie garden is surrounded by chicken wire that is down 2 feet in the ground and the groundhog dug a hole outside the fence and came out in a hole inside the veggie garden. Told neigbor about the balloon idea and he went up to the local Walgreens and bought himself a bag of 100 balloons, blew them up and put them around his yard, on the fence of the veggie garden and on a pole right beside the hole inside the veggie garden. He put his ballons low on the ground same as I did. Then he sat and waited to see what happened. No breeze blowing the balloons but they where there. Low and behold, the groundhog started coming out of the hole in neigbors veggie garden, froze when it saw the balloons and retreated back in the hole. score 1 for neighbor, zip for the "beast". Hubby came home and saw the "beast" toddling up the yard beside the driveway. He opened the car door and watched as the "beast" went to the gate. Beast saw balloons and moved away, walked further down to another spot he can get in and saw more balloons. I'm watching for the critter and watched him try the one other spot and oops balloons. He toddled off to his hole. Score for me, zip for the "beast". Would be nice if this works for good but I'm not counting on it. Would prefer to just get rid of the damn thing for good. Have visions of sending a firecracker down the hole and running away and seeing body parts come flying out. couldn't happen to a nicer critter, but my luck would be it explodes the hole and the groundhog and takes a few trees down with it and they land on my house causing damage. Now how do I explain to the insurance company that the damage just happened? Fran

Maybe the fig roots are doing you a favor by sucking up the water from the leak, if there really is one. My neighbor had a drain pipe from his shower that unbeknownst to him became detached from the shower pan, so all the water from every time he took a shower was draining under the house into the crawlspace. It caused the soil to get so soggy that one end of his house sunk three inches, making his house unlevel, which cost him big bucks to fix. BTW, I have a Chinese Elm about 20 feet away from a rental house in the backyard that's roots grew under the house about 30 feet wide and came out another 15 feet in the front yard, for a total length of about 65 feet. My neighbor had a Eucalyptus that had roots 50 feet long that grew under the fence and were sucking water out of my garden.

Sorry that you have a neighbor like that- all I can say is that those kinds of people are everywhere, doing all their ignorant 'quick fixes' with bullets and poisons. Some days I despair, and know you do too. Min