This Means War

Two days ago I went outside to water my newly planted flowers. I have been so excited about actually having some color in my flower beds this year. While I was watering I noticed that not one, but two of my plants were completely missing. Not torn up like a cat marched through my beds. Not shredded like a child picked off all the petals. Completely gone. I may have well never even planted them.

I bring JM outside to show him the strangeness of the absent plants when he notices a hole in the lawn. Not a little hole, but a big one. A hole that looked like this. He determined that it was created by a rodent. Eeeewww!!! (I only stuck my foot in the picture to give you an idea of the size of this thing, not to make you feel bad that I am in desperate need of a pedicure.)
We dragged the hose over to flood out the den of whatever has taken up residence in our yard only to discover more holes under our porch. So may and so large I'm a little afraid the whole porch is going to collapse.

So last night after looking online to figure out how to get rid of a gopher (JM's guess) I sent JM to the store to buy some dirt to fill all but one of the holes. It took three full bags of topsoil to fill in all the holes we found. They were surrounding the porch, which means our porch is resting on swiss cheese. We then flooded the last remaining hole in hopes of killing the dirty thing where it lives. If this doesn't work, we'll resort to chemicals. I am trying to save my last half of a flower that has already been visibly gnawed away. Cross your fingers for me.