Charlie Brown: Our Rescue to the Rescue

Charlie Brown: Our Rescue to the Rescue

Charlie Brown – quite possibly the greatest dog of all time. A German shepherd rescue, Charlie quickly became both loyal friend and fearless protector to me and my four younger brothers. But this particular story starts in a garden.

When you’re raising seven sons, it’s almost a necessity that you grow at least some of the food you eat. In addition to trading out work for a half a butchered pig, or a third of a slaughtered steer, Dad planted a garden just under an acre in size. We boys had most of the responsibility of tending that garden. Watering if there was a dry spell; spreading a little fertilizer or insecticide as needed; pulling weeds: all of these we accomplished without difficulty. But there was one problem associated with our garden that wasn’t so cut and dried – groundhogs.

In our neck of the woods, groundhogs were a fact of life. They lived by the dozens in the woods within a two-three minute walk from the house and there were several who took up residence in the row of trees that divided the east side of our property from the farm fields that spread out next to our place. These fields were usually planted in corn, sometimes in wheat, barley or soybeans. Once our vegetables started moving towards ripeness come late spring, those nearby groundhogs just assumed that the garden was there to make their lives easier.

After the first foraging was noticed, which was within a few hours of its happening, we knew that we had to hit upon a plan of action if we were to save any vegetables from our garden for our own personal consumption.

Plan number one consisted of my oldest brother, Jim, slipping out in the morning before the sun peaked over the hills to the East and taking up a spot leaning against the tree closest to the garden. With his trusty shotgun loaded, and his pockets stuffed with extras, he waited patiently for our garden bandits to appear. He didn’t have long to wait. A couple of the fat varmints waddled their way into the garden and headed for the tomatoes. They never knew what hit them. Everyone within a mile radius of our property (which would have totaled probably 30 people at most), however, had no doubt that at least two giant rodents had made their way to the Promised Land.

Now before anyone gets all teary-eyed over visions of Punxsutawney Phil being pulverized with a 16-gauge shotgun blast, let me tell you, groundhogs aren’t the sweet little critters sometimes depicted in the movies. They are destructive vermin who assume that all the hours you spend working in your vegetable garden are on their behalf. What they don’t eat, they render inedible.

Over the next few mornings before breakfast and the next few evenings after supper, Jim and his gun dispensed a dozen woodchucks to their final reward. But these massive rodents weren’t complete idiots. It soon appeared that they figured out that the short dude with the big gun meant trouble. Instead of their normal raiding hours of before dawn and after dusk, which had proven fatal to several of their kin, they decided late morning and early afternoon, though not as cool as dusk to dawn, was less hazardous to their health. The only ones at home during those hours were Mom, who wasn’t much with guns, and Steve, our youngest brother, not old enough for school, much less a shotgun. This called for the use of our superior intellect in formulating plan number two.

The next afternoon, as soon as we arrived home from school, my second oldest brother, PJ, and I headed out back with a new and brilliant plan of attack. We got an old glass gallon jug, went out to the 500 gallon gas drum and proceeded to fill ‘er up! Creeping stealthily through the grass (that’s why they called them “sneakers”), we scouted out every groundhog hole along a 40 yard stretch of the property line. Pouring several ounces of petrol into each entryway, we soon had the whole area smelling of gasoline. Dumping the last few remaining ounces into the centermost hole, we stood back, struck a match and flicked it into that center hole. Immediately there was a loud BOOM and flames shot out of every hole we’d gassed and a couple that we hadn’t found. As we stood there giving each other high fives, we saw one blasted groundhog stagger out of a hole, take a few steps and give up the ghost. We were certain we’d solved our varmint problem for good. We had yet to learn, groundhogs can be just as stubborn as humans.

More than a week passed with no further assaults upon our garden. Every afternoon upon arriving home from school, we’d walk along the perimeter of the garden with ear to ear grins plastered over our faces at the thought of our victory in the Battle of the Beans.

The second Monday after our scorched-earth policy had brought us victory, our bubble burst. Getting off the bus that afternoon, before we even went in for a drink, we took a ceremonial parade around the garden once more, just to be reminded of how clever we were. And there it was: the unmistakable signs of the return of the rodents. Tomatoes, beans, squash, cabbage, in ruins all over the place, left no doubt that the vermin had launched a new invasion.

A visit to my father from the county representative of the ASPCA precluded any repeat of our previously successful strategy. (I still have no idea who the rat fink was who turned us in.) No, if we were to emerge victorious, it would require an even greater application of our intellect to devise plan number three. This is where Charlie Brown came into the picture.

Charlie had already proven himself quite adept at controlling the local population of squirrels, rabbits and snakes. I’m quite proud of the fact that I was the one who deduced that, if he could take care of those varmints, he could probably handle something a little larger. First, we had to educate him as to the devious nature of the groundhog. It didn’t take us long to get hold of one. We then, in the presence of our shepherd, made the last twenty minutes of that rodent’s life an absolute misery. By the time he succumbed to his injuries, Charlie understood that the groundhog was our enemy and, therefore, his enemy as well.

We proceeded to measure out a length of light chain sufficient to allow coverage of the entire garden. We moved Charlie’s big old dog house underneath the tree where Jim had once leaned with his shotgun. Driving a stake into the ground, we fastened one end of the chain there, the other to Charlie’s leash. He was strong enough that, if he so desired, he could pull the stake out of the ground; but it was there simply to let him know the amount of area we wanted him to cover. We freed him from the chain for about an hour before we left for school and for roughly six hours after we got home and before going to bed. He seldom wandered off very far and would dash for home as soon as his name was called. If any of us were outside after school, which was most of us, pretty much every day, he never left our sight. He knew however, that from bedtime to sunrise and all during the school day, his place was as guardian of the garden. It was a job at which he excelled.

Over the next two weeks, Charlie Brown exterminated more than two dozen groundhogs. After a week, the numbers started tapering off, and by the end of the two weeks, it appeared the groundhogs had unconditionally surrendered. Throughout the entire summer and into early fall, the garden was pristine. Once in August we found a woodchuck lying in state next to the doghouse, but other than that, they seemed to have learned their lesson.

By the time we had finished the final harvesting of our garden’s abundance, Charlie seemed perfectly content to stay at his post, even though his diligence was no longer required. He would stay there until the weather turned too cold for us to leave him outside overnight. All’s well that ends well. Well, not exactly.

When school started back up after Labor Day, Charlie expected to be chained in the morning, set free in the afternoon, and secured again before bedtime. This is where the problem started. Charlie proved to be possibly too good at his job. Although there were no longer any groundhogs in the vicinity of our property, our fearless sentry wasn’t content to have accomplished all we had asked of him.

While we would take a break from our stickball or basketball games to go in for supper, Charlie would roam free. Usually about the time we’d head out after supper to take advantage of the remaining daylight, Charlie would come marching back in from the woods, proudly carrying a deceased groundhog in his teeth. Before long, we were running out of places to bury the buggars. Once the final corn was harvested from the fields next door, we simply took to throwing them over there, knowing the winter would take care of the corpses. The first few we had to toss several times before Charlie finally seemed to understand he didn’t need to bring any more back to the house. Smart dog; problem solved.

After three days of Charlie tearing off for the woods during supper and coming home with no new prey, we were happy that things were settled back to normal, at least till next spring. As we came out after supper on that third night, however, we were greeted by our nearest neighbor, who lived about half a mile away, pulling his truck up our driveway. As he exited the cab of his pickup and began to move to the tailgate, Dad came out to greet him.

“Evening, Milton,” Dad said. “Everything all right?”

“Not exactly,” Milton replied. He lifted a heavy-duty green trash bag out of his truck bed. “For some reason,” he muttered, “your dog has been leaving me gifts for the past few days.”

Dad stopped him before he could untie the bag. “Say no more, Milton. You’ve got a bag of dead groundhogs there, haven’t you?”

“I do. And I’ve no idea why.”

“It’s a long story,” Dad said, shaking his head. “Let’s just say, if you have any problems with groundhogs in your garden next year, we have a sure-fire solution for you.”

Charlie Brown stood there, his tail wagging a mile a minute, looking infinitely pleased with himself.