My name is Tom Hessler.
I spent 22 years in professional pest management in North Carolina.
I've treated thousands of properties. I've seen every burrowing pest problem that exists.
And for most of my career, I recommended the same things every professional does: trapping, castor oil applications, and occasional poison bait where pets weren't a concern.
I told myself these were the best available options.
Then a client named Carol called me in the spring of 2022.
Carol had moved into her late mother's home three years earlier.
Her mother had spent 30 years building a garden lupins, sea hollies, dahlias. Living things that held memory.
Carol had been tending that garden every season. It was how she stayed connected to someone she'd lost.
That spring, she went out in May to see what had come back.
Five lupin plants her mother had grown from seed down to one.
Two sea hollies one remaining.
The white cornflower bed completely gone.
"Things just died in front of my eyes," she told me. "It was very sad. Lots of things vanished quietly."
She had called me the previous fall after noticing vole runways near the garden. I had sent her home with castor oil granules and told her to water them in heavily.
She did everything I said.
And the voles destroyed her mother's garden anyway.
That phone call made me feel sick. Not because I had given her bad advice on purpose but because I suddenly realized I had given her advice I knew was incomplete.
She deserved the truth. Every homeowner does.
