An early 2007 Darwin Awards entry ...

Bid to electrocute moles fatally backfires

January 12, 2007 - 2:37PM

A German retiree who wired up a high-voltage cable to try to wipe out the moles digging up his garden has killed himself instead.

The 63-year-old retired construction foreman was found dead in the garden of his weekend house in Zingst next to a 380 volt cable and metal spikes rammed into the ground, police spokesman Uwe Werner said.

"The moles survived," Werner said, noting the voltage was enough to run a cement mixer or heavy-duty power saw.

"It was in any event an unorthodox method to try to get rid of moles."

Reuters

 

;D

 

David Sedaris has a great bit about a guy who tried to light mice-infested pile of leaves on fire in his yard because he was sick of the mice, and one of the mice (his fur aflame) goes sprinting into the house, burning down his home. I heard him read it on his recent tour, and I suspect it will be in his next book.

 

I'm not that shocked.

 

We'll see that, or a variation on it, in a movie sometime down the road.

 

"If you want to kill a mole, you have to think like a mole and, whenever possible, look like them."

 

He was!

 

The Darwin Awards, presented by Jolt...

 

That's how prairie fires spread, too. Rabbits, pheasants, etc. catch fire and run/fly till they are dead. But wherever they land, that gets going too.
When the Corps of Engineers had a controlled burn of some CRP a couple of years ago, the hawks were lined up on the down-wind side waiting for all the little critters to come running out in their efforts to escape the flames. It was quite incredible.

 

See, I disagree about this being a strong Darwin Awards entry.

This was innovative and clever (not quite as clever as a mole, but still clever).

Hey, lots of great inventions are discovered through trial and error. Who knows, the guy may have died inventing a fully electric cabbage patch.

 

I sense a new line of Cabbage Patch Kids. Introducing "Volta" your new buddy from the garden.

 

http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/mousefire.asp