Mole-whacking
Turns out there are plenty of ways people have thought up to remove moles from their yard. This includes fencing (labor-intensive and not effective), baiting the moles (time-consuming and inconsistent), ‘flushing them out’ (hard to do well), and traps (which rarely work and are now illegal). There’s also, of course, ‘whacking the mole’ on the head which works, but it’s also time-consuming and potentially dangerous, plus you then have to then remove it yourself. And then there’s the most common method: stomping their mounds flat—effectively doing nothing—encouraging the moles to simply push the dirt back up.
Want to know the absolute most efficient way to remove a mole? Hire a professional. All it takes is a 20 minute call and maybe a few hundred bucks. It’s expensive, but if you’re not willing to solve your problem all those other ways, can you really complain?
Alas. “Mole-whacking” seems like a perfectly appropriate phrase for any situation where you find yourself using a less efficient solution to accomplish anything when a more time-effective solution exists. You might resort to ‘mole-whacking’ because you’re trying to save yourself money or time, and you just might. But then again—it might just cause you to waste both, forcing you to pay double. Not to mention put yourself in a bad mood for the rest of the day.
Point being, it’s best to avoid ‘mole whacking,’ when you can.
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Why the term 'mole-whacking?' Because it rhymes with yak shaving (another form of time wasting); doing an unrelated task that you’ve incorrectly assumed is vital to do the thing you’re really trying to accomplish.