Help solve a "holey" mystery?

 First, let me wish everyone a fun-filled, safe and healthy holiday weekend to unofficially end Summer. Today's posting will be abbreviated in honor of Labor Day.

We've lived in our house for about a quarter of a century. Until this year, we've not seen the likes of the holes that have appeared along the South side, North facing, edge of our drive. We've plenty of ideas of what might be making them, but aren't sure specifically who to blame. We have living in the neighborhood: red and gray squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, field mice, moles, voles, shrews, etc. The prime suspects are red squirrels and / or chipmunks.

who made these holes?

Photo by J. Harrington

who made these holes?

Photo by J. Harrington

Here's the stumbling block. All the tunneling, burrowing, hole-digging critters listed above have been here in varying numbers since we moved in. Not until this year did the number and pattern of holes appear as it has. What, or who, has changed? Why now?

I admit I've not spent time checking the holes to see if they hold acorns. But if someone was burying acorns, wouldn't the holes be at least partially filled in? I'm totally stumped. This is more confusing than fairy rings. If anyone has a less speculative answer than those outlined above, please leave your assessment in the comments. That's all for now!

Like the Small Hole by the Path-Side Something Lives in

By Jane Hirshfield

Like the small hole by the path-side something lives in,

in me are lives I do not know the names of,

nor the fates of,

nor the hungers of or what they eat.

They eat of me.

Of small and blemished apples in low fields of me 

whose rocky streams and droughts I do not drink.

And in my streets—the narrow ones, 

unlabeled on the self-map—

they follow stairs down music ears can’t follow,

and in my tongue borrowed by darkness,

in hours uncounted by the self-clock,

they speak in restless syllables of other losses, other loves. 

There too have been the hard extinctions, 

missing birds once feasted on and feasting.

There too must be machines 

like loud ideas with tungsten bits that grind the day.

A few escape. A mercy.

They leave behind 

small holes that something unweighed by the self-scale lives in.

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