It's ironic but having just answered a scienceblogger question about preservation, I'm aware of a personal predicament that addresses some of the same ideals. Namely, I've got a critter in my backyard. This is what I saw on my lawn this morning:
This isn't so surprising in itself, since we live next to a farm. Lots of other fauna inhabit around and about our surroundings. But see, these are mole hills and they are wrecking my lawn. And short of doing some targeted gene therapy to coerse them into prefering my neighbour's habitat, I'm a bit stuck about what to do.
Googling mole, of course, leads to the definition of mole in the following context:
"A mole is the amount of substance of a system which contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in 12 grams of carbon 12, where the carbon 12 atoms are unbound, at rest and in their ground state. The number of atoms in 12 grams (or, 0.012 kilograms) of carbon 12 is known as Avogadro's number. The currently accepted value is 6.022 1415(10) × 1023 mol-1"
If you read on, you'll find more interesting tidbits - especially the origin of the term itself. Wiki continues:
"The name mole (German Mol) is attributed to Wilhelm Ostwald who introduced the concept in the year 1902. It is an abbreviation for molecule (German Molekül), which is in turn derived from Latin moles "mass, massive structure". He used it to express the gram molecular weight of a substance."
Curiously enough, the mole (the animal that is) is a protected animal in Germany. None of this, of course, is helping me figure out a way to make them go away.
Comments
Flood 'em out. We did that after an invasion at a previous house. It worked once. Of course, it failed about 4 times and made a horrible mess and a waste of water. But one time it worked. Saw it on Animal Planet once too, where they were doing research on prairie dogs in Kansas or some flat state and acquired them by high-powered hose-flooding of their tunnels. Those guys flew right out of the hole, like a bad Six Flags ride.
Posted by: Benjamin Cohen | July 23, 2006 4:24 PM
All I can say is not to escalate from gene therapy to orogen therapy.
Posted by: Daniel Collins | July 23, 2006 4:54 PM
Hey! Hey! Anyone else notice the "50" on the picture! That was in the video clue! THAT WAS IN THE VIDEO CLUE! Is this some cryptic clue or what? Anyway, obviously the video is Dave's lawn.
Posted by: jenjen | July 24, 2006 5:07 PM
Well Dave, I'm guessing we won't be able to draw this out as long as we thought...
Posted by: Benjamin Cohen | July 25, 2006 8:51 AM
The obvious question is, who is the mole?
sue, perhaps?
Posted by: apalazzo | August 18, 2006 12:37 AM
They have spring-loaded kill spike systems that you put over a mole's favorite tunnel. Stomp on the tunnel first, set the trap, then when he tries to dig through it again, a pressure plate lifts, the spring-loaded spike plunges down, and bang, instant fertilizer.
Incidentally, your average mole corpse will have around 12 grams of carbon in it. Are we sure that Dr. Oswald didn't have a lawn with a mole problem?
Posted by: JJ | August 28, 2010 10:22 AM